Hardly Working (9 page)

I buried my head in my hands. It was too funny and at the same time, horrible. I wanted to laugh out loud and then curl up and die. After all my fantasizing about a father, fantasizing about someone who would have had enough of the right stuff to trick my mother into getting pregnant, someone a bit scruffy but intellectual, someone with downscale clothes but brilliant upscale ideas, this was what I got, this joke of a father; a sleazy spiv tango dancer with a gangster hat and two-toned shoes.

“Watch him. Watch the way he moves,” said Rupert.

But I didn't want to watch. I didn't want to know about it. I wanted to run out of there and forget the whole idea. Finally, I understood why my mother had never said a word. There was only one possible answer. She'd been cornered. She'd been duped. Drugged even.

I mustered a voice and said, “I can't imagine my mother having anything to do with that guy.”

Rupert put back his head and looked at me, almost analytically. “She did so. Did she ever. She had plenty to do with him. Believe me, Dinah.”

So I forced myself to watch. Hector Ferrer's partner was a small henna-headed woman in a tight cream satin fringed dress, vintage roaring twenties. Before Hector linked up with her, she had been standing close to the other side of the stage, smoking, a hawklike look on her face, a similar look
of ownership. Then they stepped in and became part of the circular motion of the dance floor. I couldn't see it, whatever it was I was supposed to see, because I just couldn't get my eyes off those two-tone shoes. They continued to move until they were on our side of the room.

Then the redheaded woman spotted Rupert. An expression of astonishment rushed over her face. She broke out of Hector Ferrer's embrace and wove her way through the other dancers over to Rupert. He stood up and went to meet her, put a big hand on her small back and pulled her over to one side, out of my earshot.

But the prize moment was when Hector saw the two of them meet up. He blanched and froze, then turned red with anger. I half expected to see steam spouting out of his nostrils. Then he strutted off the dance floor and disappeared through a black door to one side of the stage. Rupert was still bent over this woman, talking intensely. Both of them briefly looked over at me and then turned back to each other again.

The woman was shaking her head. She was distressed. I stayed put, the sense of anticipation building as the music crescendoed. She nodded toward the door where Hector Ferrer had made his exit. Rupert nodded back then walked quickly around the edge of the floor and disappeared through the door.

The woman returned to the other side of the room to talk to groups of people at the tables. I anxiously stared at the door. The spare sound of the tango music wasn't enough to hide the shouting that had erupted from beyond the closed door. It must have been the two men. They were yelling in another language, Spanish, I guessed, and one of the voices was Rupert's.

I could see the people on the dance floor becoming distracted and edgy, worried that their tango might be interrupted by a real rough-and-tumble fight any minute. And
then the shouting stopped as suddenly as it had started. There was only the music. The dancers went back to their dance. I waited for the sound of the voices to explode again but there was nothing.

The tango ended and a more upbeat version of the dance began. I stood up. I'd waited long enough.

I made my way toward the black door but the henna-headed woman must have seen me. She headed me off before I was able to open it.

“You can't go in there,” she said, over the music. “It's private.”

“But I'm with Rupert. I saw him go in there,” I protested.

“You can't go in there. I told you. It's private.”

But I pushed past her, shoved open the door and went through. I was in some kind of staff room. There was a desk with a computer and piles of paper beside it, and the smell of old whisky, stale and fresh cigarette smoke, and another closed fuggy smell. But there was no Rupert and no Hector Ferrer.

At the far end of the room was another closed door. I rushed up to it and opened it. It led to another corridor and at the end of that, an exit onto the street. I stood on the landing in the pouring rain. There wasn't a soul out on the street. Rupert Doyle and Hector Ferrer had gone.

T
he woman stood in the center of the room. Her whole body was rigid.

“You must be Rupert's girlfriend,” she said.

“No. No. I just wanted him to introduce me to Hector Ferrer. I know they're old acquaintances.”

“That's a polite way of putting it.” She laughed. “They're certainly not old friends. No. I would say that they're really just old rivals. Hector doesn't have many friends….”

“Do you know where they've gone? I gave Rupert a ride here. I wanted him to introduce me to Hector Ferrer and now they're both gone.”

“Perhaps I can help you. What did you want to see Hector about?”

“It's complicated.”

The woman shook her head as though trying to clear the slate and came over to me offering her hand. “I didn't mean to be rude. I'm Victoria. I'm Hector Ferrer's partner.”

“Rupert didn't say anything about a partner.”

How Thomas would have laughed at my reaction. I could just imagine him taking a long drag on his pipe, a cloud forming around his head like a halo, and then he'd study the ceiling with a wise philosopher's look on his face and say, “What did you expect, Dinah? That the world would be frozen in time? That you could be an infant again with your two immortal adoring parents adulating over your cradle? I understand your discomfort but people have to move on. The only thing you can expect in life is the unexpected.”

I shook her hand. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be rude either. I'm Dinah. So Victoria…you're his partner in life or in art?”

“In life and art. We run this place together. We were a professional dance team some time ago but now we do more teaching than exhibition dancing. What did you want to see Hector about?”

I said, “All that shouting. What happened between the two of them? What were they arguing about? They sounded like they really hated each other.”

“They had a falling out. Many years ago. Before Hector and I…before we got together. They may have gone to have a drink and talk about it. It's incredible that Rupert showed up here tonight…I always hoped that he and Hector could patch it up, but you don't know with Hector. You never know what he's going to do next. They must have gone for a drink.” Then she did a strange thing. She put her hand on my shoulder and said, in the tone of a mother giving a daughter a lecture on the birds and the bees, “Hector can't talk about anything emotional without a drink. There are men in this world who have to choose between a woman and a bottle. It's like a love affair. Often he prefers the bottle to me.”

It was obviously eating at her so much that she had to tell me, a total stranger, about it.

Her eyes, which were pale green, became glassy under fine
red worried eyebrows. “They could be away for days. He goes off on these bouts sometimes. They've probably gone off together. To lose themselves. Completely. And to fight with each other.” She sighed with exasperation. “They used to enjoy doing it. Years ago. Before they fell out. You might as well give up for tonight. I know these men.”

As we walked along the corridor toward the door, I was sure Victoria could sense the disappointment flowing from me. She asked again, “I'm sorry. I got sidetracked. Please. What was it you said you wanted from Hector?”

I struggled to think of something. “Uh…the…uh…tango. Tango lessons.”

“Yes, of course. Well, Dinah, we always hold our
milongas
on…”

“Your
milongas…
yes…your dance night, right?”

“It's the big gathering, the important get-together in tango vocabulary. We hold our
milongas
on Friday and Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons. The rest of the time, during the week, we give group and private tango lessons and workshops. Come back next week. Monday, we're closed but Tuesday is the beginner's night. We'll see what we can do for you if you want to come then.” She walked with me to the exit door. “Take care not to slip on those stairs. They're dangerous when they're wet. I keep telling Hector we need to do something about them, but he doesn't care about the practical things of life.”

Reassuring.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Certainly,” said Victoria.

“What does the word
bronca
mean?”

She laughed. “It's seething fury, badly contained, just on the edge of exploding.” Then she added in a near whisper, “Hector's full of
bronca.
”

Terrific.

I said goodbye to the gangster's moll, got in my car and
drove slowly home through the wet night. Hector Ferrer was putting that poor Victoria woman through hell and she was letting him do it. She had been so nice to me, really, that I sensed she probably did that often, tried to compensate for Hector's bad behavior by being nice to everybody and making excuses for him.

The
milonga
had been full though, so he had to have something special, some kind of drawing power, but for the life of me, I couldn't see what it was. If it was inner beauty it was well-buried. Usually, inner beauty sends at least one tiny periscope up to the surface.

 

By the time I had driven home and was towel-dried and in my bathrobe, my neighbor was in full swing. I pulled up a chair and parked myself beside the window with a glass of wine in my hand.

Along with the cats, he now had two goats frolicking around his living room. As soon as I realized what they were, I got up and went out through my French doors, along the balcony and in through Joey's French doors.

“Joey? Where are you?”

The living room door opened and Joey posed dramatically in his black satin bathrobe, his face covered in brown gunk. “Mud mask,” he said, “It's supposed to cleanse and purify the skin.”

“Joey, you have to come and have a peek through my curtains. Right now.”

“But I'm cleansing. I'm on a schedule.”

“Just a look. Go wash your face then come over. I'll see you in a minute.”

Joey sighed, said, “That's a very expensive free sample going down the drain, I'll have you know,” and went back into the bathroom.

A couple of minutes later, I ushered him into my darkened apartment. “Here, if you sit up on the arm of the chair,
it's not too uncomfortable and you can see almost everything. Now, tell me what you think.”

Joey perched and peered through the crack in the curtain. “Oh my God, what are those creatures?”

“Goats, Joey. He's got two goats in his living room.”

Joey hummed the
Outer Limits
theme, then said, “Satan's beasts.”

“What?”

“Satanic ritual.”

“Naw. You think?”

“Are you kidding? This town is one of the hot spots for Satanic worship.”

“Did you read that in
Variety,
too?”

“No. I read it in the
Demonic Daily.
Don't look at me like that, Dinah. Okay, maybe it was
Vancouver Magazine
or something like that. Other than Geneva, this is one of the Devil's capitals. So it's logical he'd have all those animals. Walpurgisnacht,” he said, giving it his eeriest voice.

“Walpurgis what?”

“Halloween in the spring. It's like Christmas for the Satanists.”

“Oh shit. Just what we need. Evil living next door.”

“So that gives me an idea.”

Most of Joey's ideas were extravagant, involving casts of thousands.

He went on, “What we need to do is get him out in the open on Halloween night.” Joey smiled brightly. “Wanna have a party?”

Saturday

The next morning I didn't get to indulge in my usual weekend activities, such as lying around in bed reading real live dead tree newspapers, or watching
Magnum P. I.
reruns, or sipping my coffee so slowly it had to be heated up in the
microwave at least twice. The phone call I'd been dreading came early.

“Hello?” said a man's voice. “Is that Dinah Nichols?”

That voice yanked me back to another time, when I'd been a different Dinah. A younger, more naive Dinah. Some would say a stupider Dinah. At any rate, a Dinah who had sex more than once a year.

So even though I knew exactly who it was, I said, “Yes. Who's this?”

“It's me, Di. It's Mike.”

“Mike. I didn't recognize your voice. How are you?”

“I'm great. Fantastic. I got married.”

“I know. My mother told me. Congratulations.”

“Yeah. We're just getting our place organized. It's not far from yours. Close to Kits Beach. We were out in Burnaby for a couple of months but we finally got this great place in Kits. It was a real coup. Yeah, we're really happy about it.”

“Oh, that's…uh…that's uh…really…”

Irritating. Afraid you might lose your important Nichols connection, are you, Mike?

“What did you say, Dinah?”

“Terrific, Mike. So, do you have some work over here?”

“I have some hours as research assistant up at the U. And there's a big field project I've applied for. Doing some pods of orca off Friday Harbour. I'm getting your mother to put in a good word for me.”

I'll bet you are, I thought.

He said, “So how's it going with you? We haven't seen each other in…how long?”

“It's been nearly a year, Mike.”

A year since that last strange accidental meeting at my mother's house after not seeing each other for months, and the afternoon of accidental farewell sex that followed while my mother was out chasing whales.

“Yeah, well, I thought you and me and Dawn…that's my
wife…I thought we could all get together. Dawn really wants to meet you.”

“I'll bet she does,” I said.

 

There was a knocking at my back door. I had a sudden moment of panic over the state of my place. Now that Mike was a couple, he would have expectations.

Since there was no point in prolonging the agony, I had invited them over right away. Dinner at my place that night. Just to get the whole miserable business over with.

Dribbles of moisture had made long lines on the steamed-up windows and my vision was obscured. I'd labored all afternoon and the cooking smells were gourmet and delicious.

I went to open the door.

Mike, the same as ever, downscale gorgeous in a ratty gray pullover, messy longish curly brown hair, permanent five-o'clock shadow, and worn jeans, was standing there with a tiny girl, a sort of miniature pale breed of female, tucked neatly into his armpit. She was at least a head and a half shorter than him and had ethereal looks, white-blond baby-fine hair, transparent white skin that showed blue veins throbbing at the temples, tiny slender hands, and feet so small that she probably had to buy her shoes in the children's department. She was wearing a long drippy dress that resembled a body-size white spiderweb and over that, an off-white crushed velvet coat.

Against my better judgment, I invited Mike and Tinkerbell in.

“This is Dawn,” said Mike.

“I'm Dinah.” I shook Dawn's hand, taking care not to break it right off.

“I know,” said Dawn, in a child's voice. “Mikey's told me all about you.”

But Mikey wouldn't have told Dawn all about me, the whole story about him and me, because he didn't really know it himself. He couldn't see what I could see. He was
too involved, too caught up in it all. At least that was what I'd speculated to Thomas in one of my therapy sessions, and he'd agreed that it was possible.

Mike handed me a bottle.

“Thanks,” I said. “You brought some wine. Nice…good…where's it from?” But then I had a closer look at the label. “A great vintage…nonalcoholic wine.”

“Dawn doesn't drink,” said Mike.

In a voice that didn't sound old enough to use Tampax, let alone alcohol, Dawn said, “I'm allergic to the histamines in red wine and the antifreeze in white wine.”

“That's okay,” I said, holding up their bottle, “this will go just fine with the goulash anyway.”

Dawn and Mike exchanged a quick look of panic.

I winced. “Don't tell me. Dawn doesn't eat meat either? I'm sorry. I should have asked about that. My fault.”

Where did Mike, that flesh-eating, Scotch-swilling man, find a girl like Dawn? Under a buttercup?

Now Mike was leading Dawn into my living room, and sitting her carefully down in the biggest armchair, the armchair that had once been mine and Mike's, in another apartment, in another life.

He touched her the way one might touch an invalid. “She doesn't buy any kind of animal products,” he said, “and that includes shoes, purses, belts, all of those things. She wears leatherette or natural fiber shoes. It's amazing to be with someone who lives by the strength of her convictions.”

By the look of things, her convictions were her only strengths. Those and her ability to get Mike behaving like her private slave.

Mike jerked his head toward the kitchen. “Find something she can eat, would you, Dinah?”

I excused myself, went into the kitchen and rummaged around for some fairy feed, some celery and carrot sticks. She wouldn't be able to touch the smoked oyster and bacon ap
petizers that I'd set on the table. They were dead pig and dead mollusk in her books. Mike helped himself though, shoveling in the appetizers like there was no tomorrow, and when I brought out a bottle of real wine and poured myself a glass, he helped himself to that too.

Dawn nibbled on the carrots.

As I was setting the rest of the food on the table, I asked Dawn, “So what else can you eat, Dawn, if you can't eat goulash? What can I give you?”

“Well, tofu…”

“Sorry, no tofu. I can't stand tofu. It's like eating hand soap.”

“Do you have some other kind of vegetable? Apart from carrots?”