Juliet Was a Surprise (2 page)

“We know what happened,” said Adam. “They double booked. Why bug them?”

“Maybe some neighbour would have a number to call.”

Adam turned his teacup with fingertips in fast circles, the cup obviously hot. Eden gazed around the kitchen. He had not touched his own tea, nor had he thanked Eden when she put it in front of him.

“We can be your house clowns.” Eden put her hands to her head like antlers and swayed back and forth, big-eyed and unsmiling. Her eyes were playful but ironic and—he didn't know why he thought of this word—literate. But still possibly dangerous. There weren't two bedrooms, there were three. None were giant. Anybody, especially any woman, knows exactly how many bedrooms they are renting. Vacationing renters don't hitch-hike. They just don't.

HE DIDN'T THINK SLEEP
was in the cards, and he was right. He lay staring at the ceiling, blinking rapidly if he blinked at all. They didn't want him phoning the McGregors. They had no food, no car to go get some. It felt portentous for someone as handsome as Adam to dress like that. Even if—even if they were just a couple of hippies looking for vacant houses to crash in, as a kind of lifestyle, well, what kind of wimp was he? Why let himself be bullied like this?

In the deeps of the night his thoughts curled faster, possibilities he knew were less and less reasonable even as he thought them. Adam was the son he'd never had, a son who would find him wise and worth listening to. Eden would invite him to their bed and Adam would leave, nodding. Eden's nipples petalled out with Celtic-knot tattoos, and Adam's lower back bore a prison-ink swastika that, when examined under a microscope, proved to be the Upanishads in Sanskrit. They were roving cannibals waiting for a certain phase of moon, one he could discover only by reading the codes on the soles of their feet. Eden had used “house clowns” in the Shakespearian sense, and he, as king of this rental house, would receive flawless ironic instruction, emerging after a week humbled but clear-seeing and cured. Again and again he was surprised, tortured and killed in all manner of fresh ways. But most creative was how he was manipulated psychically. All these thoughts, for instance, issued from them. Even this one. These weren't his thoughts at all. These two were
clowning
with him already.

HE WOKE UP FULLY ALERT.
It didn't feel like he'd slept much. An hour, maybe two, judging from the grit when he blinked. The smell of bacon wafted from below. He hadn't brought bacon. For now, it was their only message to him; he could hear no chat. He pulled on yesterday's clothes. He would shower and shave after he assessed things.

Out in the hall he stopped and checked his wallet. His cards were all there, and sixty-five dollars. Something was wrong. He thought hard. Yes—he'd returned yesterday with only forty-five. This should have been a relief, or even funny, except it hinted at the kind of subtlety these two might keep employing. Except, he might have had sixty-five. Had he bought the worms with cash or card? He pictured himself in that 7-Eleven. He could see the hotdogs rolling on their greasy rollers; he could see the two kids in line with their neon-coloured slushies. But he couldn't see what left his hand.

In bare feet, he walked lightly so they didn't know he was in the kitchen until Eden turned with her frying pan of eggs.

“Jesus!” She put her free hand to her throat. “You got me.”

The hall bathroom flushed and Adam emerged, wiping his hands on his shorts. He was showered and shaven, and his clothes were clean. His T-shirt had a Prince of Whales logo with a leaping killer whale beneath.

It was not lost on him that Calgary lacked whales.

“Yay,” said Adam, not smiling but eyeing the food hungrily. “Breakfast.”

“Good-looking bacon,” he said, just to see what they'd say. It did look good. Thick.

“Saw a sign a few miles back,” said Adam. “Found a bike
in the shed and went lookin'. The sign said ‘double-smoked.' Still don't know what that means. Didn't see no smoke-shack nor hog-butcherin' types lollin' about.” He chuckled at his own jokes while turning to get forks from the drawer. “But I got those eggs too. Organic.”

He went for his wallet. “Well, I think I owe you … twenty.” He watched them both closely.

“No, no. Get us later. And there's no way it's twenty.”

“Hey”—Eden pretended to chide Adam—“it might be. We haven't seen him eat yet. These skinny ones are the worst.”

He offered his own polite chuckle as they chatted about how skinny Japanese always won hotdog-eating contests, and wasn't it strange that such contests were on the sports channel. He helped set the table. He served himself at the stove. He ate some bacon, eggs and toast after watching them eat first and waiting a minute. Same with the tea they were drinking. Though he desperately wanted coffee now. There was general conversation about how they'd all slept. Adam had like a log, Eden never did well in a new bed the first night, and he of course had slept well, thank you. Eden's plans for the day involved nothing more than lying in the sun, reading and “a giant cold beer at four precisely.” Adam was going to take the day as it came, but might try fishing, and could he maybe mooch a few of those worms? Then it was agreed that maybe he and Adam would take the canoe out together and try for a big one. After breakfast Eden and Adam did the dishes, hunkered down like people trying to repay a debt.

Not saying where he was going, he slipped out and climbed into his car. Once on the road, he was aware that he could
simply keep going. The clothes and whatever else left behind wouldn't add up to much. Or he could go straight to the police, though he didn't know what he'd say to them. And anyway, if these two did mean him harm it was beyond a police matter, it was personal, it was a choreography rising up from the deep forces that clarified all things.

He pulled into the Pinanten General Store. At one point he found he was smiling as he shopped, and this made him smile wider and shake his head. He bought coffee and fruit and something for dinner—a package of ground bison, tomato sauce, linguini, a lettuce head—and also a bag of marshmallows, he didn't quite know why, other than the orange-blue-yellow squares on the package seemed perfect, like he'd just discovered himself in a new land and this was its national flag.

When he returned, Eden was there in halter top and bikini bottoms, humming to herself as she bustled from cupboard to drawer, hunting something. Her breasts were truly quite fine.

“You came back,” she said wryly, not having even glanced at him. She did a little grin now and looked him full in the face. “We're not so scary.”

The sunlight coming in behind her worked like a halo, the gorgeous rainbow traces perhaps due to some imperfections in the glass. It was so overdone he could have laughed, were he not on guard.

“Coffee,” he said, lifting his plastic bag to the counter. “And milk. And cherries. I found some at—”

“Coffee! Oh! Oh! Oh!” She ripped the can from the bag and rolled it against her forehead as one does a cold can of beer. She panted with full tongue. She really was quite the comic. She checked to see that it was fair trade.

“It's in there,” he told her, pointing to the lower cupboard with the coffeemaker after she began slamming through them one by one. He told her, yes, he'd like a cup himself, and he preferred it strong.

WHEN THEY WERE BOTH
down at the dock, he went through their stuff. Both had mid-sized packs holding enough to take on a short vacation, but also an amount that could conceivably be all they owned. In hers, a well-thumbed Tom Robbins. A little hash pipe. Or crack pipe? No, he knew what a hash pipe looked like and it was a hash pipe. Why had his mind gone to “crack pipe”? Did something in him want it to be a crack pipe? Also, a little book of phone numbers. Would you take that on a week's trip? Maybe. And toilet paper. Why take that to a furnished house? Well, it might be a hitch-hiking woman's reasonable gear.

Now his knuckle bumped something cold. A pistol. So here it was. He threw his head back and let himself breathe deeply, extravagantly. Then he hefted it. It felt somewhat light. He moved to the window with a view of the yard. He could find no safety switch. He depressed a little button and out slid a magazine, shockingly full. He counted seven. Looking more closely, he saw instead of bullets the rather more impotent folded-up ends of what had to be blanks. A starter's pistol. For robberies? For two savvy travellers to scare away bad people?
Whatever the reason, it was a compact portrait of characters at home in the bad life. Here they were in his.

He went through Adam's small bag and it held only clothes, half of which were hers. So Adam was chivalrous. But why—a chill teased him—was there no ID? No wallets, money, cards. No one travelled without ID. Were they seasoned travellers taken to hiding it under mattresses? But why hide it in a rental cottage in Pinanten Lake? Why hide it from him?

The timing perfect, here came Adam striding across the patio. Checking that he left things the same, he made it to the upstairs bathroom before Adam's steps sounded in the kitchen. He locked the door, started the shower. He'd get in under the spray and think. But he'd be vulnerable, he could picture the door breaking open, he'd slip in the wet tub in an attack. So he sat on the toilet, pants on, and watched the door. He heard what sounded like the fridge slamming, then Adam's feet back outside on the deck. He stood and breathed and tried to gather reason to him. Clearly they weren't who they said they were. Clearly they had plans for him. What these plans were he had no idea. He was still open to the possibility that their intentions were good—were benevolent, in fact. They could be messengers, guides to what on this trip he was trying to relocate, they might be nothing less than a wonderful opportunity. Yet you could be tricked in precisely this way, by anticipating the best. God knows it had happened before. So he must assume the worst but be ready for anything. Stay alert, but open.

He did take his shower, feeling silly. It would be nothing so crude as smashing down a door and … and what? Stabbing him à la
Psycho
? He dried off, softly whistling, and dressed in
his bathing suit and T-shirt. Flip-flops and UBC ball cap. He wondered if they knew he used to be a professor. He wondered if they'd done research on him.

He strode down the lawn, arms swinging, flip-flops flapping, midday sun instantly at work on his neck. Walking the damp path through the cattails to the dock, he heard their murmurs before he burst into view. Kneeling on her towel and topless, Eden squeaked and covered up with an arm. Adam, sitting on the overturned red canoe, snickered.

“Oops. Sorry,” he said. He'd stopped with one foot on the dock.

“No worries. You scared me.” Eden appeared to trade a look with Adam. “You ever been to France, sailor?”

It took him a moment to realize she was serious. He told her he had.

“No big deal then.” She dropped her arm. Adam smiled at him benignly.

Wondering what this might mean on the deeper level, he knew at the same time that the protocol was to be casual, cosmopolitan. Crudely turning away was as uncool as staring. You didn't not look at them if they fell into your field of vision. He stood centre-dock with them in the periphery and he successfully kept them there. He could see only that they were very white.

“Fishing?” he asked Adam. “Or is it too hot?” He saw Adam trade looks with Eden again. “They don't seem to be feeding, though.” He scanned the water, putting a hand to his ball cap brim as a silly extra shield to the sun. But he almost knew what he was talking about. Where today there were none, last night
the many concentric circles out there on the surface had to have been fish sucking down bugs.

“Let's do it,” said Adam, slapping the fibreglass of the canoe. He offered to go up and get the worms from the fridge and the rods and tackle box from the shed.

“Have you seen any paddles?” he called to Adam's trotting back, and Eden informed him they were under the canoe.

“Let's flip it,” she said. “You flip and I'll catch,” she added, positioning herself to face him but three feet away, across the red hull, no aversion of his eyes possible. He did as best he could to keep his eyes on hers; he wasn't going to lose this particular trial, whatever it was. As he flipped and she caught, her smile was knowing.

“If you can look down,” she said, “you'll also see two life jackets.”

“Yes,” he said, and smiled as well, though it felt wooden.

“Could you please try to get him to wear one? He can hardly swim.”

“All right.”

“He'll deny it but he's a dog-paddler. He can barely get across a pool. A
width
.”

“I'll try.”

“You should put some of this on. You look hot.” Eden flipped him a pink tube. “And could you put some on my back?”

He caught the tube. He watched her eyes as he undid the cap and squirted a dollop into his palm. Rubbing a dab onto his cheeks, he said, “No. I won't.” He was pleased with himself, not only his restraint but his ability to see the buildup and
interrupt the momentum at what was very likely an important juncture.

“Oh.” She did a fine job of looking taken aback and slightly hurt. “All right.”

They slid the canoe in, he not looking at her. He stowed the paddles. After donning one life jacket he threw the other in front, thus laying claim to the back, where a canoe was steered.

Adam came smiling through the cattails, carrying the fishing gear and a bag that held, he said, an apple for each of them. Eden made a plaintive joke about no beer, then declared that she also wanted to come on their little fishing trip. Adam asked if she was sure. He made his own little joke about pirate ships and females and bad luck.

“There's three seats.” She pointed to the canoe. “It's ordained. And it's not like you're going to catch anything anyway.”