L (and Things Come Apart) (4 page)

HENRY SELDOM CURSED BUT WAS THE KIND
of man who revelled in the colours of another man's profanities. There were many curses, the most serious being the coupling of a single syllable word and a single physical gesture: a smashing glass, a fist against a table, a slamming door, a stomping foot. All were passionately percussive sounds which Henry grew to know quite well over the course of his life, but his favourite was the long-winded multi-syllabic curse coupled with the gently rapping of a head against a table.

“How are your renovations coming along?”

“Beautifully,” said the builder.

“How about a drink to celebrate?”

“Why not?” added the builder with a desperate smile. The builder then grabbed Henry's wrist firmly. “Henry, do you think I'm crazy?”

“Of course not.”

“Do you have any idea how difficult it is to install a chandelier? Most require special attachments to the ceiling and to hang a chandelier in this place would almost certainly have required reinforcing the ceiling as well as installing a special electrical box. It's an extensive renovation. This morning when I arrived to finish the job, there was one in every room.”

“Maybe you've been sleepwalking,” suggested Henry.

“Sure, that's the most logical explanation for a problem which defies logic, except that I haven't been sleeping well lately. I close my eyes and all I hear is music. I don't know from where it comes, but what I do know is that when I open my eyes, it stops. I close them again, and there it is.”

“Maybe you should speak to a doctor.”

“And risk losing my job? Things have never been better.”

“Risk losing what job?” piped the wrinkled man from a table in the corner. He was waving a newspaper. “None of you are working now, remember?”

“Enough, old man, this is not the time…” and as the old man pressed the builder about the growing strike, Henry turned to the other side of the counter. He had not seen L sitting there prior to his conversation with the builder, but he was happy to see her there now, her hands wrapped around an empty cup.

“Tea?” asked Henry.

“I just had tea,” said L. “How about something else?” She looked tired.

“How did you sleep last night?”

“I didn't.”

“Storm?”

“I guess.”

Outside, the snow piled higher.

THE DOOR SWUNG OPEN
.

“Incredible.”

Henry assumed the customer was a painter by the rolled canvas and brushes clenched in paint-speckled hands. “Incredible,” said the painter again, sitting on a stool by the counter. “Do you have any wine? Or perhaps something a little stronger?” Henry poured something a little stronger into a small, round glass and placed it in front of the painter.

“I think I‘m going mad—actually—I don't think. I am.” Henry hated to see people in anguish unnecessarily alone, so he poured himself something a little stronger, held it up to the painter and toasted both the passing of the season and the slow but steady decay of their mental faculties. The painter rolled a cigarette from a leather pouch and Henry slid an ashtray across the counter, gently striking the painter's empty glass.

“Another?”

The painter agreed.

“Has there been anything strange on television?” asked the painter.

“Same old stories.”

“Today, when I was walking, there were people, people everywhere. Just like any other day. Cars, offices, shops. The usual. And then I saw a mammoth.”

“A mammoth what?” asked Henry, rolling one of the painter's cigarettes. He was waiting for the painter to finish.

“A mammoth. Period. Tusks. Hair. Huge. It was no glimpse—I followed it for blocks. It swayed from side to side. It rounded a corner. Then it was gone. Gone. I'm gone. It must be me. I must be gone.”

“Maybe some kids let it out of the zoo last night.”

“Sure, except that there hasn't been a zoo in this city for decades and no mammoth has walked these parts for tens of thousands of years. I thought maybe the fumes from my paints…but it's impossible. Everything else is intact.”

Henry tried to reassure the painter with an incredible story of his own. “Once,” he said, leaning on his elbow and shielding his mouth with his hand so as to ensure that no one else could read his lips and share the information he was about to divulge, “I saw a man drop dead at his own dinner table in the middle of a dinner party. And no one did a thing. They continued eating and drinking over his dead body.”

The painter exhaled, “At least there is something substantial in death. Death isn't an ice age beast roaming the streets undisturbed.”

“Wait,” said Henry, “It's not finished. Then the man woke up. Just like that.”

“Then he probably wasn't dead.”

“Oh, I can assure you,” Henry said. “He was dead.”

“I'm probably just overtired,” said the painter. “I haven't been sleeping well.”

Henry handed the painter the cigarette he had rolled and the painter smoked it and several others while Henry placed chairs upside down on the tables and filled a bucket with warm water, preparing to mop the floor. The painter asked if Henry was closing and Henry explained that he only closed after the last customer left. He expelled the final breaths of his cigarette, thanked Henry and headed outside.

Henry waited several minutes, finished placing the chairs on the tables and then walked to the front door, turned the lock and turned off the outside light. He enjoyed the quiet moments spent mopping while music played softly around him; he always took his time closing up. Henry placed the mop in the bucket, but when he tried to shake it loose he saw that the water had frozen solid around the mop. Henry held his hand over the heat register wondering how he'd overlooked the fact that he was gradually freezing his customers, but the iron grill was warm against his palm. Henry struggled to lift the bucket to the sink with the mop frozen inside. He placed it beneath the faucet to let hot water pour over the bucket. The music was suddenly louder. He paused momentarily, then turned the tap in the opposite direction and listened to the music fade. When he turned the tap again, music filled the room once more as a small blackbird poked its head from the faucet and then took to the air. Henry turned his eyes to the bird as it landed on the leg of one of the upside-down chairs before leaving its perch, flapping its wings and causing the chair to fall to the floor. All the tables were close together and soon each one joined in a chorus of tumbling chairs. Henry watched the bird fly out the open door. He closed the tap and walked towards the open door to leave, a door he was sure he had closed. He paused at one of the fallen chairs and ran his fingers against its wooden frame. He shut the door, locking it behind him. He would deal with the chairs tomorrow.

He walked with his eyes lowered to the ground. When he turned around, he saw L leaving from the side of the café. She did not see him. And he watched her walk until, silhouetted against the falling snow, she disappeared. When he started walking again, the snow in front of him deepened into footprints he had yet to make. With each step he took forward a new footprint formed ahead of him. Behind him, a single set of footprints slowly faded beneath the blowing snow. When he stopped the footprints stopped. When he moved, they began again. He looked around but could see no one nearby. When he looked back to the café, much further away now, he could make out a dark figure looking up at the second storey. The figure moved closer, pressed his face and hands to the window to look inside, then moved on, disappearing behind a building. Henry stood for a while waiting to see if he would reappear, but he did not. Slowly, Henry continued walking home, following the footprints, which gradually disappeared behind him.

WHEN HE RETURNED THE FOLLOWING MORNING
, L was sitting at one of the tables sipping some tea. She was not alone. Others were inside sipping on warm drinks and reading old newspapers. Henry recognized the old man standing behind the counter.

“Hey vagrant,” said the old man to Henry, “don't let me catch you sneaking wine in here again or you'll be out on the street. You hear me? This is no place for the riffraff.” The old man slung his head backwards, roaring silently to himself.

“I was awake early,” said L. “I came downstairs for a walk and the door was wide open. I sat inside so it wouldn't be empty and so you wouldn't get robbed. Then people started to come inside. Everyone has paid.”

“It's all under control, old man,” said the old man.

“Must have forgotten to lock the door last night,” said Henry.

Henry thanked the old man, offered him a bottle of wine in return for his work, but the man declined, asking only for some bread and cheese. He said he had his own wine.

“I mopped the floor when I came in,” said L. “There was water and a mop in the bucket. I assumed you forgot or were too tired.”

Henry looked around. The place was different. The walls had changed. Someone or something had stripped them, peeled away the paint, because now they were stone, coarse and grey, and no one but Henry seemed to notice. It was as though the storm had blown straight through his place and shredded the walls. Nothing else had been disturbed. He had only been gone a night and since no one who had seen his place before inquired about its new interior, Henry thought it best to say nothing, just in case it was only he who recognized the difference.

“I like what you've done with the place,” said L. “It's very charming. And warm.”

He had never known himself to be considered either, but the walls, which he had absolutely no recollection of changing, were now charming. They were warm.

And the floors, he noticed, lifting his feet abruptly, nearly falling. The floors, once wood, he was sure—he had helped to lay it himself—were now marble. He stomped his foot, and as L's eyes rose to meet Henry's, he ran his foot against the floor, smiled at L and said, “Just a spider. I hate those things.”

Henry poured himself a cup of coffee. He held the warm cup in both hands and watched the morning turn to afternoon.

Early in the evening, while watching the television and playing their game of marionettes with the characters, Henry told L about the man he had seen wandering outside the window staring inside. They were watching an old cartoon with two pigs huddled in the corner of a thatched house, trembling and speaking desperately to each other. L moved their conversation to the television, lending her voice to one of the pigs.

“What did he say?” she asked with a high-pitched, animated voice.

“He didn't say anything. I was too far away to talk to him.” Henry followed her eyes to the television.

“Then how do you know he was looking for me?”

The pigs were excited on the screen. Henry recognized the cartoon and placed his voice in the other animated pig. “I saw him standing outside the window looking in, then he disappeared around the side of the building. Near the stairs. Maybe a friend of yours.”

The pigs on screen were frantic, running in circles, as a wolf pounded at their door.

L waited for one of the characters to speak. She asked Henry to describe this person but Henry could tell her very little, only that it was not possible to see his face. He suggested that it was possibly a long-lost friend, family member, or just an old acquaintance. L was silent. He drew his eyes to the door as the wrinkled man slowly made his way out. “It was probably no one. My imagination.”

“It was probably my father.” She spoke without moving her eyes from the television. “He comes sometimes to borrow money.”

“None of my business.”

Henry moved his eyes back to the television. The pigs squealed, huddled in a corner as the door flew off its hinges. L's eyes moved towards Henry's, and his to the coffee swirling inside the cup in her hands.

L drew back her hair, twisted and wound it behind her head and slid a black pencil deep through the centre of the swirl. She thanked Henry for the drink and walked to the back of the café. With his own nod, with his lips bent sympathetically into a smile, with his eyes closed, Henry said goodbye.

L turned to Henry as she opened the door.

“Henry.”

“Yes.”

“You must never tell him where I am if he comes here.”

HENRY RECOGNIZED THE FACE AS THE PAINTER'S
by the frantic expression and the dark circles surrounding his eyes. These were the lines and colours on faces, faces like L's, which Henry loved more than anything. He made homes in wrinkles, in those folds of the flesh carved in nights of loss, anguish, laughter, love and pain. And at times he sat wading in the salty pools in these places, keeping warm beneath heavy eyelids. Henry found little interest in the eyes of children; they bore none of the weathered markings of a life lived with eyes wide open or firmly closed, in laughter or in pain, in horror or in joy.

“Would you like to buy a painting?” asked the painter.

“Of course,” said Henry, “but it wouldn't be fair to the other artists who ask me to buy their work. Also winter has been slow…”

“Would you like to look at one then? It's actually more of a drawing.” The painter was already unrolling a piece of raw canvas covered with charcoal.

“It's lovely.”

“You see? A mammoth.”

“I can see that. If only I had enough,” said Henry.

“How about the blackbird nested on the mammoth's head?” asked the painter, pointing to what Henry believed to be a rather detailed depiction of the bird in question.

“It's quite modern. Or is this supposed to be abstract? Or surreal? I'm so bad with periods.”

“That was outside my window last night,” said the painter. “Staring in at me. Not all night. But most of the night. Long enough for me to sketch it.”

“It's very nice,” said Henry in a conciliatory tone. “I could never offer enough for something so nice.”

“How about coffee?” asked the painter. “I've been sleeping like shit.”

“How about some whiskey instead?”

“Not before noon.”

“But it's almost evening,” Henry pointed outside.

“Impossible. I just woke up.”

“Daylight doesn't lie. The sky is turning black. The day is almost over.”