Caught (7 page)

Lot of good they are, she said. Here I am with my zipper stuck.

She kept her foot in the door to keep it from shutting behind her and she turned for Slaney to see how the dress hung open in the back.

Can you just give it a little pull, she said. It got stuck once before. It just needs a sharp tug.

Let me come in and have a look, he said. He pushed her gently back into the room and followed her in and the door shut behind him. Slaney took both sides of the dress and held them together with one hand and gave the zipper a tug with the other but it was still stuck. His hands were trembling.

I’ve put on weight since I bought the damn thing, the girl said. I can hardly breathe when it’s done up. I just have to get through the ceremony and then I can ditch it.

He heard the elevator
ding
and the door to the stairwell wheezed open at the same time and three or four men were running down the corridor. One of them said there was nothing on the third floor.

It’s boiling hot in here, the bride said. The windows are painted shut. She turned and flounced over to a stool in front of a vanity table and sat down in front of the mirror and the voluminous skirt of the dress collapsed around her. The heat in the room was suffocating.

There was a rectangle of sunlight on the beige carpet and Slaney was standing in it. The cops were next door knocking at his room. They knocked and waited and knocked again. The elevator
dinged
and somebody said they had the manager with a skeleton key.

What’s all the ruckus out there? the bride said. You’d think people would have the decency to simmer down.

She bent one arm back and her fingers fanned over the zipper where it parted in a V and she stopped reaching and rolled her shoulder twice. The dress didn’t move with her. It had ribs or rods, something that made it stand up by itself.

You’re not much help to me all the way over there, she said. Slaney stepped up behind her. She gave the tiny gold bulb dangling from a bottle of perfume on the table a couple of squeezes. The perfume misted into the sunlight and the silvery particles, smaller than dust, sank away.

That’s something borrowed, she said. She told him she had an aunt who had loaned her the perfume and had made an off-colour remark at the wedding shower. She squeezed the gold bulb again.

Stinks to high heaven, she said. He could hear Wayne’s voice now, the hotel manager.

I’m coming, he was saying. Give me a goddamn minute.

Slaney had tarred the roof of the shed in the early morning and had assured Wayne the leak was repaired. Wayne had held the rickety ladder for him. He’d called out from below to ask how it looked up there. He had a fear of heights, he said. He couldn’t bring himself to go up on a roof.

He’d gone into the shed to work on a lawn mower that needed repair until Slaney was done and he held the ladder until Slaney was safely on the ground. Then they both carried it back into the shed.

Slaney had told Wayne he’d be heading out the next morning and thanked him for his hospitality.

You didn’t get vertigo? Wayne said.

For me it’s enclosed spaces, Slaney said. I’m fine in the wide open. I like it up there.

Wayne was outside Slaney’s room now with the cops, taking his time, fumbling with the keys, making a lot of racket. He was telling the cops whoever had been in the room had checked out the day before.

The heat of the bride’s hotel room was muddling Slaney. A bewilderment of heat and heady scent and the weird material she was wearing that must be made of some reconstituted petroleum product. It had a shine that seeped and crept like a living thing over the ultra-white folds and wrinkles.

She was looking up at him in the mirror. She had an ordinary face, her eyes protruded, and she was rosy-cheeked and had a dimple in her chin. He thought plain and then he thought beautiful. She was looking his way but she wasn’t thinking about him.

I don’t know where everybody is, the bride said. She had turned from the mirror to look Slaney over again. She twisted a little travelling alarm clock so it faced her.

I got a full hour of freedom left, she said. Then she folded the clock under the lid of the little black case to which it was attached and clicked it shut. Slaney heard the men enter his room. He’d packed his mother’s blue suitcase and pushed it under the bed.

The bride had a cigarette going in a brown glass ashtray the size of a Frisbee. She picked up the cigarette and tapped it three times and put it down again without smoking it.

Slaney could hear somebody running a bath in the room on the other side of the bride’s room. The water ran and ran, splashing and tumbling, and he heard the heel of a foot scrudge across the tub and then the water was turned off. The bride tilted her chin down to her chest and told Slaney to try again with the zipper.

Hurry up, she told him. Let’s get this over with. Slaney stepped forward and gingerly lifted away layer after layer of veil until he found her naked back. Her spine. She arched away from his fingers.

Cold hands, she said. She was talking about the idea of being married and starting a family young so that you wouldn’t be old when the kids grew up and moved out. How you could still have a life after they left. She knew she was young, she said, but you might as well start early and get it over with. She said she was a firm believer in if life put something in front of you it’s important to deal with it. She tossed her head up suddenly and eyed him in the mirror.

You know what I’m saying. You’re the kind of guy deals with things, am I right?

There was a knock on her door then and she called out she was getting dressed and to give her a minute.

The cops had left Slaney’s room and come to hers, and they moved at her command to the next door with the guy in the bath. Slaney heard the pipes shudder as the man turned the water off and sloshed out of the tub to get the door. There was talk but he couldn’t make it out.

The bride lowered her head again and Slaney swayed the veils out of the way. There was a dark brown freckle on her white back and he moved his thumb over the freckle without thinking. After a moment he said he agreed. He said it was important to deal with things as they came up. He said it was a pity.

What, she said.

That you can’t see what’s coming, he said. She snorted.

Look at me, she said. Just look.

What?

Do you think I saw this coming? she said. She mentioned a flower girl, her little niece on the groom’s side, who was spoiled rotten and had done her best to ruin all the fun at the rehearsal. She would have enjoyed slapping the child as hard as she could, if the kid were hers, she said. But then she said that she would never end up with a kid like that.

A bit of fabric was threaded through the head of the zipper on the right side. Slaney would have to pry the fabric free. He worked at it but his hands were shaking, knowing the cops would be back at the bride’s door in a minute. The metal teeth beneath the fabric were bunching against one another; one of the slots in the head of the zipper was jammed with two crooked teeth.

She told him then that her father felt she was a disgrace.

I’m afraid I’m going to tear it, he said.

Is it not moving at all? she asked.

It’s still stuck, he said.

Don’t break it, she said. A broken zipper is all I need.

Why won’t the bloody thing move? he asked. He flicked a loose curl over one of her shoulders. He thought of the stairs and he thought about the elevator. If the cops went into the room with the guy in the bath he might make it to the elevator.

He forced the zipper and it gave. It slipped soundlessly to the top. He brought the tiny metal hook and eye together. There was a flimsy loop of ribbon hanging out, under her arm.

You’ve got a thing, he said.

Could you just, she said. That’s not supposed to show.

It doesn’t seem to belong, he said. To the general look.

That’s a loop, she said, for you to hang the thing up in the back of the closet where you leave it for the rest of your life until maybe your own poor daughter grows up and makes the mistake of looking sideways at a man during the wrong time of the month.

He stepped back. She was tucking the loop of ribbon into the top of the dress. She had raised one arm and she was poking the ribbon under with her finger and there was a faint shadow where she had shaved under her arm. Tiny black dots, like a sprinkle of pepper. Her underarm looked naked and grey-white next to the impossible white of the dress and it was secret-looking.

Slaney saw she was sexy. Then came the knock on her door again. The bride swished around in the chair. She appeared to be astonished, for the first time since Slaney had forced himself into the room. He ducked into her bathroom. He was behind the door but he had caught her eyes in the mirror. He didn’t ask anything of her with his eyes. He waited for her to decide. She would have to do what she thought was right. The knock came harder and sharper and she left the mirror. He heard her dress swishing across the room and she opened the door.

Officers, she said.

Good evening, ma’am, one of the cops said.

I hope so, she said. I’m about to get married.

We were wondering if you’ve seen any suspicious activity, the officer said. Anyone looking like they might be on the run.

Are you talking about the groom? she said.

We’re looking for a young fellow, six-foot-two, blue eyes, black hair, slender of build, some would say handsome-looking guy.

I was looking for one of them too, she said. But you settle for what you get. I got to be at the altar in an hour, gentlemen, else the one I got might try to get away.

Sorry to bother you, ma’am, one of the cops said. She shut the door and leaned her forehead against it. Slaney came out of the bathroom.

You’re set there now, he said. The zipper.

It’s too bad we can’t open a few windows, she said. There’d be such a lovely breeze. The room is so damn hot.

It is hot, Slaney said.

Or is it me?

You’re hot, Slaney said. There was a loud slosh of water from the room on the other side of the wall. Whoever was over there had got back in the bath. The two of them were almost whispering. He was struggling not to kiss her, he realized. He thought a chaste kiss, and then he thought forget chaste. But he also knew she wasn’t looking for a kiss.

Do you think it will rain? she asked.

They are calling for it, he said.

I know that, she said.

I should probably go, he said.

Paul is being honourable, the bride said. Doing the honourable thing. I guess you don’t even know Paul. I thought you were a cousin.

I’m hitchhiking across the country, Slaney said.

You sort of look like them, she said. I thought for sure you were one of the cousins. Removed or something.

I’m heading out in the morning, Slaney said.

You’re leaving? she said. He guessed her to be about eighteen.

Have you got something old? Slaney asked. Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.

I’m old, she said. I’m something old. I’m old and I’m blue. I’m something, anyway.

She arched an eyebrow at him. It flew up and the other one stayed still. He thought she would never get any older. She had probably been born with all the wisdom she had now and it was a sizable amount.

Maybe there is a moment in everyone’s life when something altering occurs, and maybe you don’t get any older after that. The bride would probably be eighteen forever.

And whatever happened to him on this trip would be his reckoning. Prison had introduced him to the notion of a consequence for every action, and he understood that freedom was the opposite of all that. He was pretty sure the bride had come across the same revelation.

Can I give you a present for your wedding? Slaney asked. He reached up behind his neck with both hands and undid a chain and then he held his fist over her open hand and the chain with a religious medal dropped out the bottom of his fist. The water was draining out of the bath in the next room, gurgling and being sucked down, and it was a hollow noise.

St. Christopher, he said. My mother made me wear it.

Hopeless causes? she asked.

Travel, he said.

You need that, she said. I’m not going anywhere.

I’d like you to have it, he said. He realized it was true. She had gone back to plain-looking.

I’m pretty well ready, then, she said. She was putting on the chain. She pulled the medal out from her neck and looked at it, and then she dropped it inside the dress and pressed her hand over the spot where it hung.

There, she said. She asked if he was the fellow who had been in the papers. And he said he was.

She wished him luck in a very formal way that touched him.

That night it rained hard. He watched the guests coming back from the wedding, cars crawling into the circular driveway, grinding to a stop in front of hotel entrance. The women poking their umbrellas out the doors of the cars, the wind popping the umbrellas inside out.

The Papers

The next morning
Slaney could hear the bride and groom through the wall. The rhythm of their conversation had a stilted formality. They sounded forlorn and stoic. Slaney realized he didn’t ever want to sound that way to somebody on the other side of a hotel wall.

On the golf course, across from his window, a man was about to take a swing. He raised the club and brought it down fast, jerking to a stop before it touched the golf ball, a white, white egg on the grass at his feet.

Slaney pulled the phone onto his lap. He lifted the receiver and pressed it to his chest. His mother had been ashamed the first time he was caught.

Such expectations, David, she’d said then. I trusted you.

He put the receiver back in the cradle. Slaney wanted to talk to her but they had probably tapped her phone.

He had to get the hell out of the Maritimes. They were closing in.

His mother never wore jewellery, except her wedding band and the engagement ring, a replacement for the original that had been lost in the hospital when she’d had a hysterectomy.