Skinnybones and the Wrinkle Queen (6 page)

“Operas?”

“I know what an accomplished little actress you are, my dear.” For an instant the fake smile becomes something
of a grin. “You will appear to enjoy them because I, your benefactress, am enjoying them.”

“And when the operas are over?” she asks. “You'll go home and I'll take my course in Vancouver?”

“Actually, no,” I say. “At that point we shall reverse roles. I'll become your companion — your chaperone, if you prefer — in Vancouver. At least I'll retain the role of the person with the purse strings. We will drive back together at the end of the two weeks.”

“Drive!”

“Can you drive, Tamara?”

The wheels are spinning, I can tell, in her mind. She's wondering whether to tell the truth.

“No,” she says.

Good. She recognizes the folly of lying to me.

“But I could learn,” she adds.

“You will learn. You're old enough, I know, for a learner's permit. And my license doesn't lapse until September. Before my legs failed, I drove regularly.”

“I need to give the Universal Style guy a thousand dollars by Tuesday.” Tamara watches me. “Or at least five hundred.”

I meet her gaze. “If I give you the money, you are agreeing to commit to this project with a full realization that, as world adventurers, we will need to do whatever's necessary to achieve our goals.”

“Whatever's necessary?”

“Short of murder, of course. Or grand larceny. There will be...” I search for the right term, “the creation of fictions. Small deceptions. If I read you correctly, you have some talent for those.”

She's silent for a minute, her long fingers playing with a cardigan that looks like it's spent a month or two on a Value Village rack.

“What about you?” she says. “Are you a good liar?”

“Liar,” I laugh. “Such a harsh term. I'm clever, Tamara. Top of the class when I got my Education degree. My legs have pretty well given out but I haven't needed any pins put in my brain yet. And, while my mind is still good, I long to sit one last time before the bonfire of the gods.”

This time she does arch those painted eyebrows.

“Wagner knew,” I laugh. “He lets us glimpse that other world. And what do we see? The reflection of the earth and humanity with all its spectacle and follies. And glory. The stories we come up with will be small, Tamara. Small coinage compared to the currency in which the immortals deal.”

She's a witch with a list, the Wrinkle Queen. Sitting there at a patio picnic table at the Sierra Sunset Seniors' Lodge. Wearing dead rats and smoking her skinny cigars. Old and crazy.

She reads her list out slowly, stopping after each item as if she's waiting for me to applaud. Every time she pauses, smoke drifts out past her dentures. Sometime today she must have patted powder all over her face. It makes her look like a hundred-year-old geisha.

I can't help her with number one on her list. Getting her nephew Byron out of her hair for the time we'd be gone. Seems like Miss Barclay gave Byron signing power when she thought she was booking into the cemetery a few months back.

“Byron likes to keep a close check on me,” she says.

“The way you might keep an eye on gilt-edged securities.
I wouldn't put it past him to get some doctor to agree that I wasn't fit to travel.”

“Where'd you get the idea about the Philippines?” I ask her.

“Byron's a man of few words, but I asked him once what he'd do if he won the Lotto and he said he'd get a boat and sail to the Philippines where you can live like a king on very little for a very long time. His idea of paradise, I guess. Now, Byron has a birthday at the end of July. I could give him an expense-paid holiday.”

“Isn't this trip to the opera costing way more than it's worth?” I light another cigarillo for her. It tastes horrible but the sweet tobacco smell hangs in the air.

“You need a ninety-year-old's perspective to answer that,” she says. “I've never had much patience with aphorisms and the people who spout them, but one for which I've gained increasing respect is ‘you can't take it with you.' I have money, Tamara, the savings of a professional who traveled solo. Oh, not a great deal of money — but enough.”

“Put a check mark by the Philippines,” I say. “Wherever they are.”

“And the driving?”

“Maybe Herb will teach me. Especially if I say I can help Shirl with running chores. I'll be sixteen in the fall and then I can drive by myself. Take Lyle to his Little
League games and Lizzie to her ballet lessons on Saturday. All part of being proactive.”

The Wrinkle Queen gives me a questioning look.

“Part of an action plan I had to sign. Being helpful and proactive.” I tell her about the meeting at school.

“Oh, my, you are a deceptive little beast, aren't you?” Miss Barclay's thin cackle gets lost as she breathes out smoke. “Of course, I'll have to see if Ricardo's bought any extra tickets this year. They sell out about a year in advance.”

“Ricardo?”

“The owner of the bed and breakfast where I always stay.”

Bed and breakfast? Must be some kind of motel. I remember the motel next to the Tierney's Bottles Up Recycling. Sleepytime Al's. It had a sign like Christmas tree lights that stayed on all night, only one of the letters had burned out so what you saw in the dark was
leepytime Al's
. Patty-May Tierney showed me where to look for bottles in the trash bins in behind. We'd sneak out at night and collect them before the old guys with Safeway carts came along.

The Wrinkle Queen smokes silently for a few minutes. I can see Mrs. Golinowski peering out of a hallway window at us. I give her a little wave and smile.

“I think your social worker may be the biggest
problem. Doesn't he check in with you every week or so?”

“Every month, as long as things are going okay. If I go missing from the Shadbolts, he'll have the police out looking for me.” It was the police who picked me up three blocks from where Wilma was living when I ran away from the Tierneys.

Mrs. Golinowski is at the door now.

“Come on in now, you two,” she hollers. “Tamara, your class is getting ready to go.”

“Here.” Miss Barclay reaches into her purse and, pulling out an envelope, presses it into my hand. I slip it into my backpack.

“Be sure and get a receipt,” she says.

I wait until I get home to open the envelope. There's a thousand dollars in it in fifty-dollar bills. I've never seen so much money. It seems like enough to run off somewhere and start a new life. No Shadbolts. No Mr. Mussbacher. No Wrinkle Queen rattling on about operas.

But I don't.

On Tuesday I go to the office building on Whyte Avenue where Mr. Jude Law Model Man has his office. He looks surprised to see me and he gets pretty excited when I take out the money.

“Hey! Good for you, kid!” He opens a file folder and looks at a schedule. “Yup. There's still a couple of spots
open in the August class. I'll just slate you in here and get you a receipt.”

He has a deadly smile. My hand shakes as I take the receipt.

“You can pay the balance when you register in August. Now, let's see, here's a package about billeting and meals if you want to tap into that option, a map of Vancouver and the campus area...” He stops in mid-sentence. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Sure.” But I do feel like I could keel over. “I guess I should have eaten more lunch.”

“Watching your diet, eh?” he says.

I nod.

“You're thin, and I know people think a model can never be too thin. But as a photographer I can tell you that with a little more meat on your bones — say, ten pounds — the camera's really going to love you.”

As he shuffles papers, I notice his hands. The fingers are nicotine-stained.

“Where do you work?” he asks.

“I'm not working right now. I've still got a few high school courses to finish.” I don't tell him that it's all the courses in grades ten, eleven and twelve. “My family wants me to finish those before I begin working as a model. But they're very supportive. They're happy that I can start training this summer.”

He fiddles with a cigarette he's freed from a package of duMauriers. I can see he's anxious to get outside for a smoke.

“Are you going to be there this summer?”I ask.

“You bet,” he says. “I do the photography. We make sure everyone has a great portfolio by the time the course is finished.”

As we leave the building together, I see my bus a couple of blocks down, yell goodbye, and make a dash across the street. From the bus window, I can see him leaning against a wall, smoking, and I know he's watching the bus.

“Everything okay?” Shirl asks when I get home. “How was your grad committee meeting?”

“Oh...you know. Committee meetings... No one could agree...”

“Tuna casserole for supper. And a big Caesar salad.” Shirl is beaming. “We're eating healthy tonight, sweetie.”

“Great.”

As I head down the hall to my room, I can see the gremlins glued to the television. A cartoon moose is dancing around in a ballet tutu. Too bad.
Tips for Teens
is just about to come on.

What I really need is my own
TV
. It's not hard to imagine what kind of amazing big-screen television I could have bought with that thousand dollars.

Before they decided to take in a foster kid, my room used to be Herb's study. Most of the stuff — bowling trophies and the computer — he moved into the master bedroom. But I still run into bits and pieces, mainly stuff from a company Herb had selling some kind of magical car polish. I guess the bankruptcy company didn't want the five thousand brochures he'd had printed.

I put my
Universal Style
folder at the back of a desk drawer and cover it with a couple of stacks of Eterno-Shine brochures.

“The creditors did take Herb's lease car,” Shirl told me just after I first came to live with them. “It was a cherry-colored Jetta that was absolutely dazzling when it had a couple of coats of Eterno-Shine buffing up the red. Thank heavens they didn't take my 1990 Plymouth.”

When Herb gets home from work, I wait until he's settled in the living room with a beer and the newspaper before I go in and perch on the ottoman — close enough to chat with him, far enough from the
TV
to cut through the cartoon racket.

“Hey, Tam,” Herb says through a beer belch. “How's it going?”

“Great. Everything's good at school.” I pause. “And I'm thinking about working. In fact, I'd like to get set
for a job I've heard about. But it involves driving.” That idea just popped into my head.

“Driving?”

“Yeah. Making some deliveries.”

“But you're not sixteen.” Herb struggles with another Pilsner burp.

“In a couple of months, Timmy...” It's the first name that comes to mind. “Timmy thinks there'll be an opening and I want to, well, you know...” I give Herb my most heartwarming smile, “be an excellent driver.”

“Delivering pizza?”

Herb's good at filling in the blanks.

“Yeah. His cousin's going away to university next fall. He's driving for them now. But, if I could drive, I could also help Shirl, driving Lizzie and Lyle to their lessons and things.” I remember my original argument.

It's like a light clicks on. Herb's eyes all of a sudden have a bit of shine. Even his bald forehead takes on a glow.

“You've come to the right person,” he says. “I actually worked part time for a driving school when I was going to business college.”

I wonder how Skinnybones is sleeping these days? Tonight my mind is so filled with the scheme that I think I'll never get to sleep. There's that social worker, Mr. Muss-something. Bound to be checking up on her. But how often? And what can we tell him?

When I try to read — I've put aside
A Tale of Two Cities
and hunted up a copy of
Great Expectations
— I find it impossible to concentrate. Latoya comes in and, I can't believe it, but it's actually a relief to have her hovering around, chattering away some of these long minutes of the night.

“He's going to have to go to summer school,” Latoya says as I close the Dickens. “George and English just don't mix. They're oil and water.”

“He'd have made his grades if he'd been in my class,”
I tell her. “They used to give them all to me — the truants, ESL...”

“That's what he needs,” Latoya sighs. “Someone to get him away from all those computer games. His dad says, ‘George, no computer ‘til you bring home the good marks' and then there's a big fight...ai yi, I'm right in the middle. He needs the computer for his homework and his dad says no computer...”

This could go on for a while.

“Summer school will probably be good for him,” I say.

Byron has bought me a contraption with earphones that plays CDs, which I have trouble getting to work. But the thought crosses my mind now that listening to something might while away some of this endless night. And, slim chance, Latoya might be able to get it working for me.

She is eager to try, anyway, poking bits of sponge against my ears, popping open a little compartment.

“You gotta CD you wanna hear special?” She's flicked on the bureau lamp and is shuffling through a small pile of discs Byron brought from the house.

“
Götterdämmerung
,” I say.

“What?”

“G-O-T-T...”

“Yes!” Latoya waves a CD case triumphantly. “Some
of the names they got for these groups, eh?” She pops the disc into the player and presses a button. There is a storm of static pouring into my ears and I yank off the earphones.

“Too loud?” Latoya giggles. “Let's see.” She finds the volume button. “There, try it again.”