Greedy Little Eyes (8 page)

I unwrapped my sandwich and flipped to a description of the bedding on which I reclined:
100% Egyptian cotton. These heirloom-quality linens …
A chunk of turkey and mustard hit the duvet. I rushed for a wet face cloth.

After the last bite, I called Vancouver. His voice mail answered.

Once the
beep
had sounded, I was suddenly tongue-tied. Mashing the receiver to my head, I said, “Hey, Clay. You’ll never guess where I am: The Waldorf! In New York!” A nervous titter escaped and I wondered what had possessed me to call my brother. Clay took a special pleasure in his disgust for each member of his family. In his first year of graphic design school he began referring to us all as
hidebound plebs
.

“So … I haven’t talked to you in a while. Thought maybe it’d be good to, uh, catch up.” My eyes began to sting. “I miss you.” Out the lips before it could be caught.

I put the phone down and turned to the muted TV. On screen was a contortionist, her back bent, legs crooked up and over her head, through her arms. Though she was twisted into a position that appeared more like affliction than skill, her face was serene.

The next morning a man who looked as though he’d been working here since the hotel opened its doors in
1931 wheeled in my breakfast. His hands all vein and bone, he set the cart at the foot of the bed and handed me the bill.

He offered it
,
you should take it
, Petra had said over lunch when I asked if she thought Andrew had meant his breakfast invitation. I tugged my bathrobe tighter and looked into the faded blue eyes of the waiter. His mouth twitched and he stared at the floor. Tucking hair behind my ear, I stared at the figures, the cost of the eggs, the juice; I wondered what to tip a man who had probably seen so much he’d rather pluck out his eyes than see any more.

I scribbled down what a guilty man might tip and signed my name.

All the dishes were covered in silver domes, the grapefruit juice set in a silver decanter filled with crushed ice. Before opening the serviette, I rooted for my camera, put it on the windowsill and set the timer. A couple of flashes later I had proof that I once had breakfast in bed at the Waldorf. I examined the digital display, myself in the Plush White Terry Robe, holding up a slice of bacon, perched behind a table that glistened silver. I looked happy.

I decided my day should be spent in the presence of beauty. Setting off in my new gold slippers, I headed over to the Metropolitan Museum and slipped into the middle of a small tour as it snaked its way into the Tiffany
section. I hung back as the docent lectured her group on the intent of Tiffany, the way he had weaseled his way around the secular use of stained glass and the potential outrage of the Church. As we trailed her to the Temple of Dendur in the Egyptian section, the docent spoke of the generous patronage of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. I recalled a story of Jackie finding a woman’s pink panties in her pillowcase when married to John Kennedy. She is purported to have turned to her husband and said, “Would you find out who these belong to, because they are not my size.” Infidels and infidelity.

My mother stepped up her hours and went to work full time the day I started junior high. Hospital Administration was what she did but I never knew exactly what that entailed. People answered to her though. I imagined that would be a relief: someone else could do the shit jobs around our place. But there was the unspoken issue of Clay and me being left alone that had to be addressed.

My mother found our new sitter at the hospital doing volunteer work. Clarita showed up at the house one Saturday morning toward the end of summer vacation. My mother toured her around, explaining what her duties would be.

I sat at the table eating cereal as my brother staggered into the kitchen on cue, barefoot in his pyjama bottoms and a T-shirt, bleary-eyed.

“Say hello to Clarita,” my mother directed him. “Clarita, you’re unlikely to see Clayton, he has so many extracurriculars on the go.”

He grunted into the fridge and then tipped the open carton of orange juice toward his mouth. As he lowered it, he turned and stared blank-faced at Clarita.

Coming from a long line of tall thin WASPs, my mother may not have considered that a short, plump Mexican girl might be an object of desire. I could almost hear my brother’s erection as he gazed into the new maid/babysitter’s vulpine eyes. Her dark hair hung like heavy curtains opening to the main attraction: a caramel-skinned, full-lipped, Latina matinee. He left the room immediately.

Clay started coming home after school. He loitered around the kitchen, putting things in the dishwater, wiping counters. Meanwhile Clarita and I talked over grilled cheese sandwiches and I became smitten with the fact that someone in the house met my gaze as we spoke. She’d gone to a private American school in Mexico City. I loved the way she said “film,” never “movie,” “literature,” instead of “books.” Clarita was ferociously sophisticated.

Eventually Clay sat down and joined in the kitchen talk, staring like a snake at a flute when she spoke.

“English, Spanish, French
and
German,” he repeated, astounded, one afternoon. “Man, I can barely speak English.”

“Knowing it’s half the battle.” I didn’t so much as glance his way.

“You’re a smart guy.” Clarita’s fingertips tapped Clay’s. “We learn best when we’re young. Look at Lila, she’s only twelve, her mind is gymnastic.” She fanned her thick eyelashes toward me. “You are a watcher too,” she told me. “You find the clues in body language. You would be a good detective.”

A far cry from what I’d heard in the past. “You were born with your eyes closed and they stayed that way,” my mother said once. She claimed that I would not open my eyes or hands for days after my birth.

Clay snickered. Clarita did not. He suddenly stared at me in a way that shut my mouth. It seemed as if he hadn’t seen me in years, and I felt a strange panic that he would look away. The front door slammed and we all turned to see my father come into the kitchen.

He was home early for the first time in months. It was the first he set eyes on Clarita. He insisted she stay for dinner; we would order in.

That night Dad lobbed questions at Clarita and we discovered that her father had been a politician in Mexico. A scandal of the sort she didn’t want to discuss over pizza had driven them north to Vancouver two years earlier. Her parents would go back when things calmed down. She wasn’t sure she would go with them.

The room was tense with my father in it. Clay was tense.

My father’s eyes followed Clay’s glance to Clarita’s fidgeting hands. I could see it plainly, as though the future were driving in fast down a long flat road, but I did not want to be a witness. I did not want my brother’s
gaze to slip away, to take on that old battered look again, the look of a boy who knew he was alone in this world.

The air had become lighter this past year. We could abide each other again. Every movie is the same though: eventually, the kissing stops and the men start shooting. I laugh and wriggle until somebody screams.

I came back to the hotel suite agitated by crowds, the constant sense of a different stranger dogging my heels. The message light on the phone flashed. I hesitated, then picked up the receiver. One new message: Felicia. She was sick, she said. I was welcome to come over, but she’d be lousy company.

“Lousy, lousy, we’re all lousy,” I muttered, and erased the message. The next one was in a woman’s German tongue and I listened a few seconds as though I understood and then set the receiver down. Fidgety sparks scattered through my lungs and belly. I poured from last night’s wine, got up and wandered around the suite.

Opening the door to Andrew’s walk-in, I looked at the suits, the shirts, all hung neatly. I stared, hunting for a flash of truth. Reaching into the nearest jacket pocket, I felt a slippery square sleeve of plastic, condom-sized—but it was only an empty vitamin packet. I backed out and shut the door.

Television on, I crawled into bed just as some news from home came on screen. “Canada’s most notorious murder investigation has yielded seven additional charges
against alleged serial killer Robert William Pickton, bringing the total number to twenty-nine.” In Vancouver the story would have been milked far longer; the screen would have filled with what looked like mug shots of lonesome-eyed, rough-skinned women. The anchor would have reminded us that most of the victims were drug-addicted prostitutes. But in America, he just moved on.

My mind flashed to Petra sipping sake yesterday afternoon. “You know how I make up my mind: fast. I will call and tell Andrew I am done. And this way it ruins his weekend with the babysitter.”

I woke to the ringing phone. On the television, sitcom actors gesticulated wildly to the tune of canned laughter. I reached for the receiver.

Groggy, at first I thought it was my father on the line. It wouldn’t be him though. It wasn’t his resentment that I kept trying to appease. It wasn’t his fury that tarred my dreams.

“Clay? What time is it?”

“Noon. What do you want?”

It was 3 a.m. in New York: midnight in Vancouver. I guessed that was “noon” bourbon time. The contempt in his voice made my chest pound.