Dark Tiger (2 page)

“So who died?” said Calhoun.

Noah shook his head quickly. “Far as I know,” he said, “nobody we know has died lately. It isn't good news, though, Stoney. Seems like I should be telling you and Kate together, but I got an appointment in twenty minutes.”

“Sounds like some kind of real estate news,” said Calhoun.

Noah Moulton nodded. “Yes, sir. It is. Seems that Mr. Camby, who owns this place, as you know, he's got somebody wants to buy it.”

“So you came here to see if Kate and I want to put in a bid for the place? Give us first refusal? That it?”

“Not even,” said Noah. “It looks like a done deal, Stoney. You and all your inventory's gotta be out of here at the end of your lease.”

Calhoun shook his head. “You aren't serious.”

Noah nodded. “Afraid I am.”

Calhoun shook his head. “That just ain't right. We've been here—hell, Kate started renting this place about ten years ago. You can't just . . .” He flapped his hand in the air. “It's not right, that's all.”

Noah shrugged. “It's spelled out right there in your lease. Mr. Camby's obliged to give you two months' notice. Your lease is up the end of July, and here we are, just the middle of May.”

“It still ain't right.” Calhoun glared at Noah Moulton. “Whose side're you on, anyway?”

“Sometimes I find myself on both sides,” Noah said.

“I expect it can get damned awkward for you,” said Calhoun.

Noah looked up and smiled quickly, indicating that he had caught the sarcasm. He picked up his mug of coffee, then put it down. “Don't shoot the messenger, Stoney.” He twisted his baseball cap back onto his head, then stood up and shrugged into his rain slicker. “You'll tell Kate, then?”

“Supposing we talked with Mr. Camby?” said Calhoun.

“Mr. Camby wouldn't take kindly to being threatened,” said Noah, “if that's what you've got in mind.”

“I thought we could appeal to his good nature,” said Calhoun. “Kate and I, we might like to buy the place ourselves, since it's up for sale.”

“You can try, I guess,” said Noah. “On the assumption that Mr. Eldon Camby has a good nature to appeal to. Or you could convey an offer through me, if you want, since that's more or less my job and what I'm good at. But I'm pretty sure that Mr.
Camby's not going to be receptive to offers, any more than he would be to threats.” Noah shook his head sadly. “He's already shaken hands and signed papers on a deal.” He reached down and touched Calhoun's shoulder. “I'm sorry as hell about this, Stoney. You want, I'll keep an eye out for another place for you. Who knows? This might turn out to be a good thing. Find you a bigger shop, better location, more agreeable landlord?”

Calhoun looked at him for a minute. Then he stood and headed for the front of the store, leaving Noah Moulton no choice but to follow along. When they got to the door, Calhoun turned and held out his hand.

Noah hesitated, then shook Calhoun's hand. “You want me to start looking around for you, then?” he said.

“Can't stop you from looking,” said Calhoun, “but I gotta talk to Kate, see what she wants to do and who she wants to deal with from here on.”

Noah shook his head. “This isn't my fault, Stoney.”

Calhoun patted Noah's shoulder. “Don't worry about it. Things'll work out. Thanks for dropping by.” He reached for the knob and pushed the door open.

After Noah Moulton left, Calhoun gave Ralph a whistle, and the two of them went out to the front porch of the shop. Calhoun stayed under the roof and out of the rain, which had started in the morning as a steady wind-driven downpour but now, in the afternoon, had turned into a soft, misty drizzle, though it was still damp and chilly and unpleasant. He kept looking up and down the street, wondering where the hell Kate was.

Ralph wandered over to the side parking area. He gave all the shrubs a leisurely sniff and a quick squirt and decided there were no partridges or quail out there, so he trotted back up onto the porch and poked his nose at the front door.

They went inside. Calhoun went back to his office and
checked his phone to see if Kate had called while he was outside, but there were no messages.

He wasn't exactly looking forward to telling her that their lease had been terminated by Mr. Burger King, but he was a little concerned that she still hadn't returned from her meeting at Walter's rehab place. It wasn't like Kate not to call if something came up.

 

 

 

 

It was a little after four thirty when Calhoun heard Kate's Toyota truck pull into the side lot. He recognized the distinctive voice of the Toyota's engine. To him, the sounds that engines made were just as individual and distinct as people's voices. Calhoun guessed that back in the time before a lightning bolt slammed into the back of his shoulder and obliterated his memory, he'd been trained to identify vehicles by the sounds of their engines. He wasn't sure how much good this talent would do him now, but it did enable him to know when Kate had arrived without having to look out the window.

Ten thousand volts of electricity had wiped out Stoney Calhoun's memories of his entire previous life, which, he figured, was a mixed blessing, at least. As well as he could tell, though, getting zapped by lightning hadn't affected his talents and abilities. The last seven years—his new life, and the only one he knew—had turned out to be a great adventure in self-discovery. He'd learned that he could cast a fly and speak French, repair an outboard motor and shoot a jump shot. He could recite several Robert Frost poems and sing the entire
Revolver
album and cook venison chili without a recipe, and he understood, without thinking about it, how to kiss and touch a woman—Kate Balaban, to be specific—in ways that seemed to give her as much pleasure as him.

That bolt of lightning had left him deaf in one ear and absolutely intolerant of alcohol, neither of which had proved to be much of handicap.

A couple of minutes after the sound of the Toyota's engine fell silent, the bell over the door dinged, and then Kate came in, stomping mud off her boots.

Calhoun, who was sitting at the fly-tying bench toward the rear of the shop turning out a batch of Dark Edson Tiger buck-tails, watched her and smiled. All these years they'd been together, and he still had to swallow hard whenever he first saw Kate Balaban after not seeing her for a while. She was tall and broad-shouldered and slim-hipped, with the regal nose and high cheekbones and strong jaw that betrayed her half-Penobscot-Indian genes. She had long black hair, which she usually wore in pigtails or a braid, but today, because of her meeting with the doctors and nurses and therapists at Walter's rehab facility, she'd pulled it back and pinned it up in a kind of bun that somehow emphasized those amazing cheekbones and gave her an elegant, more formal appearance. Downright glamorous, in Calhoun's opinion.

Today she'd dressed for the occasion—tailored gray pinstriped slacks and matching jacket over a bone-colored silk blouse, thin gold chain at her throat, black high-heeled boots. Calhoun's breath caught in his chest. He liked best of all the way she looked in a pair of fish-slimed cutoffs and a ratty old Grateful Dead T-shirt and the pink fishing cap with her braid sticking out the back, but it was always a surprise how good she could look when she went for elegance, too.

He tried not to think about Kate lying naked and asleep in his bed with her hair loose and splashed over the pillow and the sheet only half-covering her.

Stonewall Jackson Calhoun and Katherine Balaban were business partners, best friends, and off-and-on lovers. Lately, the loving had been mostly off. Kate had pretty much stopped coming to Calhoun's cabin for steaks and sleepovers. Even so, there was no doubt that they continued to love each other.

Walter, Kate's husband, was the issue. Or, more accurately, the issue was the guilt that both Kate and Calhoun felt about him. Walter knew about their relationship and insisted that he was all for it, but now that his multiple sclerosis had advanced to this new, more ominous stage, they didn't feel right about enjoying the pleasures their own healthy bodies gave each other.

It seemed to Calhoun that they were waiting for Walter to die, but he and Kate never talked about it that way.

She hung her jacket on the peg by the door, unpinned her hair and shook the dampness out, and then came over to the bench where Calhoun was tying flies. She stood behind him, and he could smell the clean, flower-and-rain scent of her hair. She touched the back of his neck and gave his shoulder a quick squeeze. “Nice flies,” she said. “Remind me what they're called?”

“These are Dark Edson Tigers, honey,” he said without looking up at her. “Invented by Mr. William Edson, who lived right here in Portland, back in 1929. He invented the Light Tiger, too, but I much prefer the dark version. Dark Tigers imitate smelt. Good on the lakes for both salmon and trout right after the ice goes out.”

She leaned over Calhoun so that her breast pressed against the back of his shoulder and took one of the Dark Tigers from the batch that he'd tied. “It's quite pretty,” she said, “but it doesn't look much like a smelt to me.”

“What it looks like to you don't really count,” said Calhoun, “inasmuch as last time I checked, you weren't a landlocked salmon. Your pectoral fins ain't the right shape, thank God.”

Kate laughed softly, put the fly back, then went around and sat on the stool on the other side of the bench from where Calhoun was sitting.

He looked up at her and caught something in her eyes that suggested it might not be a good time to tell her about Noah Moulton's visit. “Everything okay, honey?” he said.

She shook her head. “You want to know the truth, I'm so mad I could spit.”

“What's going on?” he said. “What can I do?”

She gave him a small, unconvincing smile. “It's not your problem, Stoney.”

“Walter, huh?”

Kate shrugged.

“Don't tell me it's not my problem,” he said. “That just hurts my feelings. You and I are way past that. You got a problem, it means I got a problem. That's what loving each other is all about.”

She smiled. “That's not the only thing it's about.”

“You better tell me what's going on with Walter.”

Kate blew out a breath. “It's not Walter. Not that he's exactly getting better. That's not going to happen.” She shook her head. “It's his damn insurance, Stoney. Instead of getting my usual update from the doctors and therapists and caregivers this morning, I ended up in a conference room with folks wearing suits and neckties, some of 'em people I never even met before, including the damn COO of the place, a slick fellow named Gibson who runs a whole string of these facilities, got one of those smooth pink faces looks like he sandpapers off his beard and a sly smile that never shows his upper teeth? Anyway,
they're all giving me this double-talk bullshit, and near as I can figure out, they're trying to tell me that if Walter isn't showing improvement from the rehab, after a while the insurance for it gets cut off, which is ridiculous, since MS is a progressive disease that nobody gets better from, and everybody's known that from the beginning. Anyway, if the insurance money dries up, they're explaining to me, as apparently it's about to do, it means Walter can't stay there at this nice facility any longer unless I can pay for it myself. Which I can't, of course, over five hundred dollars a day.”

She glared across the fly-tying bench at Calhoun, and he saw the dampness in her eyes. Knowing Kate, he guessed they were tears of anger and frustration, not sadness, and certainly not self-pity.

“They must have had some suggestions for you,” he said.

“Oh, sure.” She gave him a big phony smile. “We got options, all right. I could bring Walter home and hire nurses. Or quit my work and stay with him myself. He pretty much needs someone with him round the clock now. Or there are places the government will help you pay for where you can dump a terminal person like Walter for the purpose of letting him get on with dying, if you don't mind the smell and the dirt and the crappy food and the lack of trained staff, not even to think about what it does to the spirit of the person you call your loved one. Or your own spirit, for that matter.”

Calhoun wanted to get up and walk around the bench and give Kate a hug, but he could tell that hugs weren't going to help her right now. “What can I do?” he said.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “You?” She shook her head. “Nothing, Stoney. There's not a damn thing you can do. I got another meeting next week to go over my options with some of the people at the place, and meanwhile I thought I'd give Annie
Cass a call, see if she's got any brilliant ideas.” She looked at her wristwatch. “Maybe I can catch her at her desk. I'm gonna try Annie right now, okay?”

Calhoun shrugged and nodded, and Kate stood up and headed for her office in the back.

Annie Cass was Kate's lawyer. Calhoun supposed they should talk with Annie about the termination of the shop's lease, too. He'd suggest it when he told Kate about Noah Moulton's visit. He didn't think this was a good time to dump more bad news on her.

He hadn't thought of any other suggestions. He felt a powerful urge to help, to do something to make Kate feel better, to get their problems solved, to get their lives smoothed out, but he didn't know what to do. Not knowing what to do was always worse than having a plan, even if the plan was dumb and bound to fail—and right now, Calhoun didn't even have a bad plan. It just felt like he and Kate had been pig-piled by the gods of bad luck on this gray drizzly Tuesday in May.

 

A half hour later, Calhoun was at the counter at the front of the shop talking on the phone with the Patagonia sales rep when Kate emerged from her office. She came over, leaned her forearms on the counter, looked Calhoun in the eye, and held up one finger.