Heroes (31 page)

Only the faintest threads of Bayle's pant fabric remained on the edge of the passenger seat. Feet side by side in the icy, torrenting gutter, Fast approaching thirty, Bayle thought, and still waiting to be dismissed.

Smith still had his hand on Bayle's shoulder waiting for a response. Waited, but it didn't come. He pulled his hand away and Bayle at once got up out of the car.

Before Bayle had a chance to mutter any more so-long bromides and shut the door, Smith asked, “How much did they say it was going to cost you to get your stuff back?”

“What stuff?” Bayle said.

“The stuff from your apartment, Bayle. How much to get it back? I presume that's how this sort of thing works.”

“Oh, that stuff. I, uh, I didn't ask.”

“You didn't ask.” Smith shook his head and pulled out his wallet, took out two fifty-dollar bills and handed them to Bayle. “This was supposed to be our celebration money, but I guess your beginning to get your affairs in order is probably the prudent thing to do at this time.” Bayle hesitated.

“Oh, take it, Bayle. You're going to catch the flu standing there like an idiot in the rain. I know things are tight right now so just take the money. Besides, if you want to, you can always pay me back. Don't let on that you know when you meet with him next week, but Hunter told me that the St. Jerome's job pays forty-nine per to start. You shouldn't have to worry about any boarding house evictions then.”

Bayle took the bills and stuck them in his pocket. “Thanks,” he said.

Smith nodded; started up the car engine, flipped on the wipers. Flashing Bayle a smile, “You're welcome,” he said.
“Doctor”

Bayle rapped twice on the roof of the car and walked
away. He watched Smith's BMW join, then get lost in, a cautious procession of east-bound automobiles all with wipers dutifully working to provide their careful owners an unobstructed view of what was out there in front of them and even what just might be.

Bayle pulled off Smith's tie and stuffed it in one of the pockets of the borrowed tweed jacket. Felt the hundred dollars in his pant pocket. Knew where he was going.

Jimmy raises his empty beer bottle from two tables over in homage to Bayle's choice of juke box song. Politely inquires if another jumpy tune like that last one is coming up and if, seeing as Bayle is, like himself, sitting all alone, might he, Jimmy, join Bayle for a glass from his pitcher of beer.

Another song, another round.
Ad infinitum.

U
TTERLY SOUSED,
it's simple, really: lacking a reason to get up off the barstool, invent one.

Something like: Who got my stuff? My stuff my stuff. I want my stuff back. My stuff belongs to me. That ballbreaking, two-timing, lawyer-hiring germalist of an ex-girlfriend, she'll know where my stuff is. Because my stuff my stuff. Wait a minute, already said that. Okay, then. Just one more pint and off to get my stuff. Because my stuff my stuff. Wait a minute, already said that.

“Cancel that pint, Stan,” Bayle said. “People to go and places to meet.”

“You mean you don't want your beer?” Knott said, pint glass already poured out and sitting there beading on the bar top waiting.

“Already said that,” Bayle said.

Pockets weighted with what was left of Smith's money, a quick cab ride deposited Bayle in front of 1118 The Esplanade, an eighteen-floor ode to yuppie fashion and cultivated consumer convenience. The building itself couldn't be said to be of any particular architectural period or style, but it
was
very clean and very tidy in appearance — even the potted plants in the lobby were spotless — with a wine store, dry cleaner, and frozen yogurt shop all within easy walking distance. Throw in free cable and a good Thai restaurant nearby that delivers until four a.m., and what is the meaning of life but that movie by Monty Python where that fat guy eats so much supper he explodes all over the place. Hilarious, that. Just fucking hilarious.

Bayle lurched around for a bit on the sidewalk in front of the building straining his neck and trying not to fall down while attempting to locate through the driving cold rain Jane's fifteenth floor apartment. Beginning to feel slightly dizzy, he moved closer to the wall, managing to get only slightly less out of the rain. But the effort had paid off. He'd found her apartment and the lights were on. She was home.

He waited for someone to come along and open the code-accessed front door while trying not to look like he was waiting for someone to come along and open the code-accessed front door. It was after nine now — he'd spent the
better part of six hours at Knott's Place — and between the booze, lingering dizziness, and the icy November rain that hadn't let up the entire time he'd been inside the bar, Bayle didn't know how long he could wait it out. The steady downpour drumming against the green canopy hanging over the entrance to the building wasn't helping matters either, the pounding rain lulling his eyelids, gently thawing his resolve. Equal parts alcohol- and adrenaline-fuelled visions of making a dramatic entrance and just-as-dramatic claim for his belongings were soon replaced by altogether soothing thoughts of simply falling asleep under three layers of blankets in Smith's overheated study. Bayle leaned against the wall of the apartment building. Closed his eyes. Leaned ....

Until a beautiful blond woman in her early twenties — tall and then taller still in four-hundred-dollar heels, face all cheekbones and perfect, elevated nose, exactly the sort of beautiful that getting caught in the rain can only succeed in making even more dripping beautiful — weighted down with an armful of delicately string-tied packages and lovely cream-coloured shopping bags swiped her plastic identification card through the slot and made it through the door and into the white marble lobby.

Bayle slipped inside.

He pushed the UP button on the elevator and waited; ran his hands through his soaked hair a couple of times and coughed. The elevator finally arrived and he was inside, pressing 15 and thinking that maybe now was a good time to figure out just what he wanted to say when he got to where he was going. But the elevator door too-soon dinged and Bayle coughed and sneezed himself into the lovely, hardwood floor hallway, finding himself staring at #1503, Jane's apartment door.

Which, lucky him, opened up without Bayle having to even bother knocking. Opened up just as Bayle was trying to decide how to best deal with a long, dangling green string of freshly sneezed snot. And with Jane and what could only be boy-toy August at her side looking on — boy-toy August himself blond, buffed, and looking just like the better men's
magazines told him to — Bayle decided it best to go right to the root of the problem, a sharp pinch of the nostrils and quick flip of his wrist flinging said trail of onerous mucus directly onto
Untitled, Number
37, the apartment-building-supplied contribution of tastefully framed culture to the strip of wall beside Jane's door.

In a calm, even slightly bored voice, “I'll call security,” August said, peeling off his brown leather gloves, Bayle having apparently just caught the couple on their way out the door. August turned around and headed for the phone inside the apartment. Seeing that Jane hadn't immediately closed the door and bolted the hatches, “For goodness sake, Jane,” he said, “shut the door. You don't want to encourage these sorts of people. Who knows, he could be dangerous.”

“Only to himself,” Jane said, crossing her arms, looking at Bayle. “It's all right. I know this one.”

August hesitated for a confused second; set down the receiver to the phone but didn't remove his hand. “You don't want me to call security?”

“Not yet, anyway.”

August walked back to the door and crossed his own arms.

“I think I can handle this,” Jane said.

“Are you sure?” August said, giving the soaking and now violently coughing Bayle a considered once-over.

“I'm sure.”

August only momentarily lingered before nodding and disappearing back inside the apartment, saying over his shoulder as he did so, having apparently already forgotten about the potential menace in the hallway, “Don't let's be late for dinner tonight, all right? We told everyone we'd be there for ten sharp.”

Bayle still hacking away, face flooding red, “The only reason I can possibly think of why you're here,” Jane said, “is that you've managed to come to your senses and have with you,
in full,
the twenty-five hundred dollars that
you stole
from
Toronto Living.
And even then, technically speaking” — she pulled up the arm of her heavy overcoat and checked her watch — “you're
approximately thirty-six hours late. The magazine's lawyers made it clear, I thought, that all moneys were to be repaid at their offices by cash or certified cheque no later than nine
a.m.
yesterday morning. It is now” — she consulted her watch again — 9:06
p.m.”

Bayle finished his coughing spasm and took a couple of deep breaths, hands on his hips like an exhausted runner at the end of his race. Swallowed with difficulty and wondered who had dropped the razor blades down his throat when he wasn't paying attention. Felt like his knees were about to buckle and the top of his head was ready to blow off. Said, more like he was asking permission to go to the bathroom than demanding his inalienable rights, “I'd like my stuff back. I'd like to know where my stuff is.”

Jane looked at the sniffling Bayle in his soaked-through suit jacket and squishy black Oxfords. “I'm sorry about that part, Peter. I didn't want it to come to that. But after you repeatedly refused to respond to any of my numerous faxes and phone calls asking for some kind of explanation, well, that's when the lawyers needed to be brought in and, well, they ....” She looked up. “Come inside and towel off. I think there might even be one of your old sweaters still here. I'd offer you something to drink to warm you up but by the looks of it you've had enough already. Obviously some things haven't changed. August can put on some coffee. There's a late dinner party we have to be at directly, but we've got a few extra minutes.”

Obviously-eavesdropping August seriously begged to differ, however, greeting Jane with watch-on-arm extended for an up-close inspection just in case she wasn't quite aware of the late and getting-later hour. Jane immediately shot him one of her patented fuck-with-me-at-considerable-personal-cost death glares that Bayle well remembered putting an end to the direction of many a late-night discussion she wasn't prepared to go, saying only, “Coffee, August.”

August yanked his jacket down over his watch and huffed off into the kitchen. The sound of coffee mugs and spoons
being slammed onto the kitchen countertop could be heard clearly in the livingroom.

“Wow,” Bayle said.

“What?” Jane said. She was on her knees, searching around on the floor of the hall closet.

“Nothing,” he said. “It's just hard to believe that that used to be me in there.”

Jane pulled out what she was looking for, a small cardboard box, and from it a very large and very expensive wool sweater. She stood up and turned around to see Bayle staring at the doorway to the kitchen. “Meaning?” she said, hard lines tightening around her mouth and eyes, the beginning of the dreaded death glare.

“Nothing,” Bayle said, “forget it.” Knowing he was out here and August was in there was enough. Gave him, even, an unexpected return to focus. “Look, to tell you the truth, I don't feel so hot, and I've got a feeling it's not just the start of the world's worst hangover, either. Tell your houseboy thanks for the refreshments, but if you could just let me know where and how I can get my stuff back I'll let you two be on your way. Because my stuff my stuff.”

“Because your stuff your stuff.”

“Exactly,” Bayle said.

“I think you've being hanging around that hockey team too long,” Jane said. “Here.” She tossed him the sweater. “At least you always did have good taste in sweaters.”

“You bought me this,” he said.

“Oh.”

She pushed the cardboard box back into the closet with the toe of one of her heels and shut the door. Discovered and proceeded to carefully pluck off an offending piece of lint that had made its way onto her overcoat.

“So?” Bayle said.

Lint free, looking up, “So, what, Peter?”

“So where's my stuff?”

“I'm sure I haven't the foggiest. That's something you'll have to discuss with the lawyers. And one word to the wise: I'd
be at their offices bright and early tomorrow morning. And you might want to be a little more presentable than you are right now. By then you'll be almost two days late with the return of the money.”

“Who said I had the money?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I've got maybe twenty dollars in the world to my name.”

Very un-Janelike, it looked as if Bayle's ex-girlfriend and ex-employer was going to either drop a kidney or blow a gasket, whichever was more physiologically possible.

“Why do you think I avoided your faxes and phone calls in the first place?” Bayle said. “Because I had it?”

“August!” Jane called out.

In came August from the kitchen doing his best to hurry up and heed his master's voice and, at the same time, balance a silver serving tray loaded down with coffee pot, cups, spoons, milk pitcher in the form of a white porcelain cow, sugar dish — in short, everything necessary for a nice hot beverage shared between friends on a cold and rainy night. “Christ, I'm coming,” he said. “It's not like I could make the pot brew any faster, you know.”

“Put that tray down,” Jane said. “We're going.”

“But I just ....” August looked down at the tray. He
had
done a lovely job; what with the porcelain cow as the centrepiece of the tray and a handful of gingerbread cookies laid out all around the edge of the platter.