The Killing Type (18 page)

His house is a lovely-looking brick
thing in an equally lovely neighbourhood. I sink into a luxurious
leather armchair and Leonard goes to get us drinks. I think sadly
of how odd it is to be here with him, about how unusual it is for
me to feel a strong connection to any person these days. In better
days at Toronto U. (where he was a professor of comparative
literature) he was one of the main delights in being there at all,
but after his retirement and move out west, everything
deteriorated. I’ve never been quite sure why he’d decided to retire
early anyway: Toronto U. is one of those more progressive and
forward-thinking schools which doesn’t feel compelled to enforce
mandatory retirement and thereby lose its most experienced faculty
members only to save a few dollars.

“Andrew?” I hear.

“Oh, sorry. Listen, Leonard, it’s
excellent to see you. Retirement seems to be treating you
well.”

“I have my days.”

“Have your days? You don’t mean that
you’re regretting it for some reason?”

He looks up. “Oh, no, quite the
opposite. It’s wonderful not so much to be away from the work, the
scholarship—some days I miss that actually—but being away from the
politics and the other bullshit, well, that’s a relief frankly.” He
smiles.

“It’s fascinating to hear you say
that. We were good friends then—still are—but I never knew at the
time that the political shenanigans bothered you or were something
you were even aware of.”

“I tried not to think about it at the
time, or talk about it much.”

“You know,” Leonard says, “you never
did fully explain to me why you ended up leaving. If I recall
correctly, you talked about disagreements and a mutual decision to
leave and all of that, but what really happened?”

It is my turn to smile this time.
“Well, I am not sure whether it is a very long story or a very
short and simple one.”

“Give me the medium version,” he
says.

It takes me about five minutes and I
do attempt some degree of objectivity—allowing that I should not
have gotten quite so angry that time, admitting that sometimes I
was just trying to disrupt the departmental meetings—but I do
reaffirm to him the maltreatment I experienced.

“Wow,” he says when I am done and
while I look down.

The evening proceeds, I have to say,
with some tepidity after that. I really am not sure of the reason.
I do feel a connection to Leonard, and I am not merely flattering
myself in saying that I believe the feeling is mutual. But there is
something, perhaps, about the separation of time and place that
simply attenuates any relationship, however true or intense it
might have been. There are some awkward silences and even a good
forty-five minutes when we are reduced to watching some very loud
and inane television, until ultimately Leonard rescues us by
professing to be tired. He leads me to my room and I am soon
asleep.

I don’t know how much time elapses (it
seems like very little) but there is a knock on the
door.

“Leonard,” I say, still not quite
awake. It’s neither morning nor night.

“There’s been a bit of a—I got a call
just now and it looks like my brother in Calgary has had a stroke.
I have to fly out today to be with him and his family. It nearly
killed him, Janice said.”

I shudder selfishly first, wondering
what exactly it is I have to do and where I have to go not to be
surrounded with death. “I’m very sorry to hear that,” I manage
eventually, now sitting up in bed. “Is there anything I can
do?”

“You know,” he says, “and I hope this
is not an imposition, but it would be good if you could stay here
in the house for a few days. I mean, I know you were staying
anyway, but I’d like to have someone here even when I am gone.
It’ll probably only be for a few days and if it seems like it’s
going to be longer than that, I’d call.”

It’s perfect, and I agree. For a
minute I wonder if I am dreaming.

“I’ve got a cab waiting outside, so
I’ll just give you a call when I’m in Calgary. Thanks for this.
Everything you need should be here; you’ll be
comfortable.”

And with that he is gone from the
doorway. Presently I hear muffled voices, and a trunk and then a
door close, and car tires squealing slightly. I sink back to sleep,
really dreaming this time.

I find it quite disorienting several
hours later after I’ve had my fill of sleep and am padding around
in another person’s house when he’s not there. It feels like
burgling and I half expect the police to come crashing through the
door, finally catching me just as the toast pops and I am dishing
the scrambled eggs out onto a plate. In fact, it is all quite
idyllic. I walk around inspecting the place like it is a new house
I’ve just bought or a hotel I am staying at for a while. It is
immaculate and homey at the same time, unpretentious but also not
cluttered with the detritus that accompanies people who cannot move
to a new house without dragging most of their old possessions with
them. I hear music outside and when I look out the small window
above the sinks in the kitchen I see two cars, one an old white
sports car with the radio blaring and two young girls in tartan
skirts dancing and smoking, and the other a new black sedan with
two older women in the front seat, one of them crying.

I treat myself to a quick but
wholesome breakfast (fresh grainy bread, strawberry jam from
England) and head out the door. Leonard, even in his haste, has
left me my own set of keys, including the one to his car. I
hesitate only slightly and then having calculated the likelihood
that I would ever have this opportunity again, I unlock it, eschew
the seatbelt, and fire the motor up. The dancing girls glance over
at me for only the briefest moment and then, finding me a
lacklustre attraction, resume their more rhythmic lives. As I pass
the woman crying, I slow down like a crude rubbernecker on the
highway after a collision. Her friend is handing her a tissue and
neither of them, absorbed in their own sorrow and ministration, has
time for me.

I head for the public library, partly
for the joy of experiencing another city’s organization of
knowledge, but acknowledging to myself that I will likely poke
around in the murder section as well. Never mind: there is still
enough of a vacationary feel about the impulse that I give in to my
tendencies as usual. I am disappointed to see that the emphasis
seems to be on things other than books. The DVD check-out area is
bustling: the clerks who are sorting them for the eager patrons
wear gloves, as though they were preparing for surgery. And, alas,
the aforementioned murder section is serviceable but not
impressive, and has nowhere near the breadth and depth of that in
the Knosting library. There’s a long line-up at the internet
stations and so I just leave.

Back in the car, I start to
feel odd. I pull out of the excellent parking space I’d snagged,
and in the midst of this bustling provincial capital I realize that
I feel safer than I do in my adopted little Knosting. There’s a
kind of
niceness
here that used to exist in Knosting before the murders
started. All problems seem minor, the girl with a piece of duct
tape on her cut heel instead of a Band-Aid, the flagman at the
construction site who is a bit ashamed of how easy hard labour is,
the latte waitress who mock-cries and tells me she was “starting to
panic” because she couldn’t match my order to the little number at
my table. Still, there is something about the place that “creeps me
out” (must stop watching those teen television programs while I am
here). A bit defeatedly, I head back to Leonard’s place, a safe
haven until I plan my next move.

I misjudge the house as I am heading
down the darkened street and so inadvertently turn into someone
else’s driveway. The couple in the wrong house initiate a suburban
all-systems alert. The man is at the living room window, peering
out just enough to see who the intruder is but not so much that he
exposes any more of his coordinates than he has already (or that
the enemy has already gleaned). The wife is at the side door, the
light goes on, and I am expecting that she is the one who will do
something—a warning shot, a shaking fist—but when I back out and am
headed to my true destination they have apparently deactivated the
alert and returned to the cocoon. I drive around the block a couple
of times when I realize that they are Leonard’s right-next-door
neighbours, partly not to frighten them with the proximity of the
threat, but partly for my own peace of mind. I eventually sail
nicely into the correct driveway, turn off the engine, and head
back into the house.

The answering machine is blinking and
I check the messages as Leonard has instructed me to. The first one
is from him: his brother has died and after a couple of days to
“take care of things” he should be back in Victoria, and would I
mind staying in town until he does? (I do, really, but what choice
does one have?) The second message is from a neighbour (perhaps the
skittish one whose driveway I was just in?) asking if those
sausages of his which are in Leonard’s freezer are “getting in the
way,” and if they are he is willing to come over and pick them up.
I am not daft enough to miss the purpose of the call, and I will
make sure not to eat his precious sausages. There’s another message
about some kind of festival with 800 pies, and the last one from a
husky-voiced female talking about a “gift that’s fun to sit on,”
and ending: “I think you know what I mean.” (I truly do not, nor do
I want to learn.)

I get myself a glass of water from the
fridge and settle into a cushy black leather armchair. I ruminate
again, even in this domestic comfort—these thoughts never desert
me—I ruminate again on how death follows me around. Granted,
Leonard’s brother was downed by God and not by a serial killer, but
I pine now and again for some extended period of time which is not
punctuated by one mortality or another. I remember now some of the
stories which Leonard told me about his brother (though his name
escapes me: Renaldo or something like that?): a big man,
apparently, although I have no idea whether that is a factor in the
incidence of stroke. Sad to say, but I am better informed on
unnatural rather than natural causes. A younger brother, as I
recall, and with an odd phobia which Leonard shared with me one
evening: Renaldo couldn’t bear to see the inner workings of any
building he was in. He visited Leonard at his rather ramshackle
apartment in Toronto once and the medics had to be called after he
opened the closet door of the guest room and found a mess of duct
work and wiring there, the result of a renovation project which
Leonard’s landlord had dragged out for months. Leonard was watching
television in the living room when he suddenly heard a shriek and
then a thud, the latter being Renaldo falling to the floor. Leonard
rushed to the bedroom and found him in a lump, his head bleeding
from contact with the dresser on the way down.

I get a call from Leonard asking me to
pick him up at the airport the next day.

As is generally the case when I am
about to lose something, even something which I am no longer sure I
want any more or have ever wanted, I pine for this house and this
city all the next day. I get up early and take a drive up to
Shawnigan Lake while it is still very dark, enough to envelope me
if I turned off the headlights. I stop at the Westside Market, not
open yet, but the rancid smell of yesterday’s (and perhaps many
months’) french fries still inhabiting the otherwise crisp, clean
air. A couple of hours later, the day underway for other humans
now, I am in the English Properties, all those coiffed housewives
toodling around in various expensive SUVs while the Filipina help
walks the little dog and the black help waiting at the bus stop
after her shift is over. I return to Leonard’s house exhausted with
the intensity and number of the sensations, not quite sure what I
should do. A warm shower at first, and then adjusting the faucets
till it’s tepid, cool, cold, and coming out of that I do feel
refreshed. On the way to the airport, I find myself humming some
inane song I have picked up somewhere like a virus.

I park in the temporary parking and
scramble across to the airport (I am running late, with no excuse
other than dawdling). I check the screen for arrivals and run
again, and as I run up breathlessly I see that Leonard is there
already and is sitting off to the side with his
suitcase.

“I’m very sorry,” I say as I rush up
to him.

He smiles weakly and I am a little
shocked at how tired he looks. I imagine that the fact of a
brother’s death along with the hasty arrangements all added up to a
severe lack of sleep.

“It’s no problem,” he says. “Thanks
for coming.”

I have some difficulty finding the car
and we go up and down several rows before Leonard spots it. Seated
comfortably and headed back to the house, I first try to engage him
in conversation, but his answers are short and at first I worry
that I have done something wrong or that he is miffed at me for not
knowing where I’d parked the car when evidently he wanted to get
home and go to bed. But, no, he’s just tired, and so I let the
silence just sit there like another passenger. It feels good, this
proximity to another person, this slice of intimacy but without the
need to dirty it up with chatter. I weave my way confidently
through the streets on the way back to the house. At first I am
worried that Leonard is monitoring my choice of directions, but I
glance over to see that his head is pointing out the passenger-side
window and I even think he may be dozing occasionally. When I pull
into the driveway, he quickly opens the car door. I retrieve his
luggage from the trunk and we proceed into the house.