Gargoyles (24 page)

I went along with the break-in for two reasons and they were both good. I've thought a lot about it since and I still think they were good. The first reason was selfish — I wanted to check the house out more. The second was only good — I wanted to protect the house from Dave MacIver.

We were so nervous. Even in the planning of it we fell to whispers, and any jokes came out stuttered and fake. No one really wanted to do it, but we all had to sound like we did. That's not true — MacIver was eager.

We knew now that Sunday was their night out. We gathered at the backyard fence. Besides MacIver and me, only Al Cody and Bobby Kerry had shown up. We watched Mr. rev the car until Mrs. appeared bearing a casserole and basket of bread. Off they went. We hopped the fence and, since it was the height of summer, we had our pick of half-open windows. We chose the breakfast nook.

MacIver went in first so I made sure I followed. We'd agreed not to break or steal anything big enough to bring us real trouble, but one look at MacIver there in the kitchen told me to watch him closely. Hunched, breathing hard, and eyeing everything faster and faster as if he might now own it all, he seemed an animal in some grim paradise.

I admit to feeling a sort of euphoria myself. It was wonderful in there, so cool, so dim, the bright colours standing out sharply. I felt so full of oxygen I no longer had to breathe. Again, maybe this was the adrenalin of thieves in a dark new place. But I felt acquainted with this house. I felt like the house.

The last in, Bobby Kerry no sooner touched the floor than he panicked and yelled, “They're here!” He scrambled back out and was gone, leaving just us three.

Following MacIver through the dining room, I stopped under the flaming hand. Dramatic up close, it
was
a photograph of a hand, surrounded by a rosy mist, with green flames curling out the fingertips.

On the other wall was a blow-up of Disneyland, Mrs. Gook arm in arm with Scrooge McDuck, her smile girlish as could be, her wide-set eyes half-closed and teary. Under the picture a bookcase held mostly dictionaries — English-Polish, English-French, English-Russian, English-Hebrew — and two books had a special place:
Welcome to Canada
and
Canadian Fact Book
.

A fiercely whispered “Just
this
” made me turn to see MacIver take a knife in a jewelled scabbard off the mantel. More a sword than a knife, its curve made a quarter moon and reminded me of Oriental barbarians, who could slash with it, not stab. MacIver worked it into his belt and before I could say a thing he whirled at me and stiffened up tall and said, “It's my
birthday
.” We both knew it wasn't his birthday. His eyes were crazy.

I turned away, a host who'd lost control, as MacIver sprayed two decks of cards, a violent shower of squares, around the room. This had Cody giggling like a girl. I decided I'd be the last one out and clean up as best I could. But I couldn't stand here and watch.

I found the door to the downstairs. Descending to one immense basement room, lit only by dusk through two window wells, I flicked the switch. I saw right away that while the upstairs was hers, this was his. The walls were grey gyprock. The floor was still cement. The greyness was overpowering. Two walls displayed group portraits, his family, I decided. Stepping
closer, I saw bearded men and sour women, in severe unsmiling rows. All were black and white, but from the looks of their clothes and the landscape, colour film wouldn't have added much. A wedding picture of the two of them hung in a special place, it too a drab grey. They looked frightened.

A third wall displayed certificates and diplomas, most in foreign lettering but some not. The Indiana Center for Psychic Studies. The Parapsychology Institute of America. The Kirlian Institute Pioneer's Award. All to H. H. Karmapov.

The fourth wall was a giant black felt curtain, dense and light-proof. I pulled it aside to find another room, a developing room with trays and bottles of chemicals and, in the middle, resembling a drill-press, harnessed on poles to point down, what looked to be an odd black camera.

I felt like I'd walked into a rainbow. The walls were jammed with pictures of hands, feet, leaves, flowers, all emitting flames and swirls of violet, gold, lime and rose. One single fingertip, enlarged three feet square, revealed its whirlpool of fingerprint, from the centre of which issued a needle-thin ray of crimson.

I stared for I don't know how long before I noticed the books, neat stacks and rows of
The Kirlian Annual
and
Kirlian Photography
. A single hardbound book had his name on the spine, just
Karmapov
. I plucked it out and thumbed through and saw in its pages the same leaves, hands, and feet that hung on these walls. One appeared to be a corpse's hand, with nothing surrounding it but a kind of muddy mist. I found the dining-room picture in one of the full-page feature shots.

I ran up the stairs. Mr. Karmapov was famous. Even MacIver would be amazed by this stuff. But in the kitchen I stopped, hearing their noises upstairs. A thud, wild laughter. At the foot of the stairs a bottle of perfume lay open, dripping heavy
sweetness into the air. I didn't dare show them the magical basement. I wanted them out of here entirely, out of Mr. Karmapov's house.

In the upstairs bedroom they'd pulled out drawers, it looked like MacIver had slashed into some pillows with his birthday knife, and Mr. Karmapov's ties were cut in half and scattered. They'd found condoms and blown one up and tied it. The bathroom, where they were now, was strewn with Q-tips and toilet paper, and MacIver was lipsticking the mirror.

“Jesus, we gotta go, we been here an hour,” I lied, trying to sound scared. I turned away in a hurry, took some fake pounding steps downstairs, then tiptoed back up and ducked into a guest room. In a minute Cody and MacIver descended. I started in the bedroom as quietly as I could, stuffing and putting back drawers, gathering snipped ties. I didn't know what to do. Write him a note, apologizing? Pay him back in secret? I thought of running home for my dad's ties. But I just stuffed all the damage into a pillowcase, to take.

I went to work in the bathroom, scooping, stuffing. I winced as something smashed downstairs, then more laughter. On the mirror and part of the wall MacIver had left a perfect image of himself: misspelled obscenities and one large swastika. I started on the swastika, remembering the Hebrew dictionary.

Then from downstairs a muffled shout, some shuffling and banging. A car door closed, a kitchen door crashed.

“Vot? Vot?”

I don't know why I was running down to them, the Karmapovs, but running I was, down the stairs, glad the swastika was off at least, glad my pillowcase held most of the destruction. I may just have thought it, but I may in fact have yelled, “I've got it almost clean, it's almost clean.”

I found them embracing in the kitchen, Mr. Karmapov crooning and stroking his wife's head. They swayed. It was as if they'd done this before. They swayed over the bright yellow of a broken mustard jar on the floor, and squirted ketchup, and a sneaker Al Cody had lost escaping out the window. Mr. Karmapov was staring across into the dining room at his flaming hand picture. It was smeared with molasses.

He turned to look at me now, and doing so he smiled, snorted, and shook his head. I was no big deal. His cold blue eyes bulged wide and seemed to be taking in far more than just me. Later, in the hearing, I learned he had eyed other thieves, and brutal police, and acts of cruelty I couldn't begin to imagine. Grimly smiling, he released his wife and whispered to her and she obediently went to the phone. Still smiling he moved to the middle of the kitchen and squared his shoulders, blocking my way to the door. He looked cruel, like he hoped I would try getting past.

I stood where I was. I could smell him. It was a smell of rage, and it was also a foreign smell. I said I was sorry, looked to both of them, and got a response from neither. Now, with another snort and a fresh smile, from his wife's basket on the counter Mr. Karmapov pulled a square, black box, a twin of the camera in the basement. He cranked a lever around and around and the camera whined and the harshest lime-green light issued from a little flashlight-thing on its top. He pointed the camera at me and the white-lime beam made it hard to look.

“You scared,” Mr. Karmapov said, so softly he probably didn't care if I heard him. “You be very colour.” He added, louder, “Smile.”

Another day's headache is almost gone. The taxi delivers me and there's Jay in his cluttered carport. He's standing calmly, he looks normal. I don't know what I expected. He's taking a puffy ski jacket from a dry cleaner's bag. He treats the filmy bag gingerly. I see it's the bag he wants and I'll bet he took that ski jacket in just so he could get one.

He hangs the clean jacket from a nail in the carport wall. Jay's is one of those trusting carports where people could come in and take stuff. Other nails hold rain gear, and what look to be some of Penny's dresses and windbreakers. Penny left Jay maybe five years ago now. As far as I know he's been alone in this house since then. Also in the carport are stacked paint cans, car tires, road-hockey sticks and such, plus some chairs that one day might get repaired. It's not the kind of stuff thieves would walk even the length of a driveway to grab, but middle-of-the-night teenagers could have themselves a time.

“What's wrong with your car?” is how Jay greets me.

“What do you mean?”

“The taxi.”

I tell him I took a cab because I assume tonight involves beer.

“I'm not going to,” he says, “but feel free.”

He's wearing jeans and a T-shirt and so am I. For some reason this bothers me. I watch him smooth out his bag, and notice the candles and strips of balsa wood scattered on a table.

After waiting another moment I ask, “You have any? Beer?”

He thinks there might be a few cans in the fridge, at the back, I'll have to dig around. It's funny seeing old friends like Jay, because even though he's around forty, like you, your history is one of being young and crazy together, so you still see him, and by extension yourself, as young and crazy. Or maybe it's, seeing him, you're reminded you're not crazy any more but want to be, as though it's a good thing. For better or worse it's in the air, even though he called earlier today to tell me he has a brain tumour and wants to spend the evening together.

I return from rooting in the fridge, beer in hand, and there were only two others, I'll have to make a beer run somehow. Taking a perky first sip, I recognize now what Jay's laid out on the table: stuff to build a UFO candle-bag. I'm amazed I remember.

“Good,” he says. “You found one.”

“You're not drinking?”

“Actually,” says Jay, “I'm fasting.”

“Because of . . .”

Jay turns to me, eyes full of energy. His hair needs washing but he looks sturdy as can be.

“Yup,” he says. For a moment I'm worried he isn't going to say any more. But he does. “I've been reading lots about it. It actually might help. Fasting burns your fat and your toxins
first, and then it does tumours at about the same time it does muscles. Then it does organs — you don't want that, so you have to stay on top of it.”

I tell him I didn't know any of this.

“It's one thing you can do. It's easier than one of those special diets.” He gives me a half-smile. “Fasting you don't have to do anything at all.”

I'm sweating, it's hot, my beer is already gone. It's the perfect situation for a cold can of beer and my middle has warmed up and spread with that first little bliss. It must be eight o'clock but it's the longest day of the year, the solstice, and feels like afternoon. On the phone Jay had mentioned the solstice and said the evening would be “exactly perfect for launching.”

“So what do they say? The doctors.”

“Not much. It's still early.”

“Well, I mean, when did you find out? And . . . You know — what's going on with it?” It's hard to come out and ask, Are you going to die? Or, How much time?

“Well it's not exactly official yet. Not ‘confirmed.'”

“I mean are they sure it's cancerous and all that?”

“Well, no, but it is.”

I relax at this. Jay might not even have cancer. We can relax this evening and maybe I can get Jay to have a good time.

“So you don't really know.”

“No. I know.”

“How?”

Jay gives me another half-smile and raised eyebrows. “How do we know anything?”

He turns and glides the long, air-light bag over to the table as if it were a ghost. I tell him I'm amazed he's remembered. We'd tried this when we were perhaps fifteen.

“It'll work this time,” he says. “I've got it figured out. I made this hoop thing.”

He lifts his hoop, made of curved balsa wood the width and thickness of a toenail, formed to fit the big mouth at the bottom of the bag, maybe two feet in diameter. He tosses it up and catches it, showing me it is light yet strong, a hoola-hoop for faeries. He points to the white candles and tells me he timed one and they burn an inch a half-hour. So it's my job, he says, to cut eight one-inch candle stubs. A small fine-toothed saw lies beside the candles. It's a job he could've done himself in two minutes. So he's been thinking of ways to include me.

“I'll get on it,” I tell him, flipping my can into a blue recycling box as I go inside for another. I haven't asked him why he's doing this silly UFO thing. Only when my hand is on the fridge handle do I see that this might be exactly what a guy with a brain tumor might do.

I return as Jay ties, with thread, two strips of balsa to the hoop so they cross at the middle. This cross will carry my candle stubs. Another job he gives me is to stick the stubs to the wood with a few drops of melted wax. My headache still flirts so I'm glad to be using my hands.