Archibald Full Frontal, page 2
“And from now on, take your own margarita-ass downstairs to do the laundry. I am not your maid,” I finish triumphantly, even though I did agree to help with light housework on the maid’s days off. He gulps and splutters as if an ice cube has gone down the wrong way, still speechless, playing cards suspended in his hand like a diva’s fan.
“I’m going to bed.” I make my exit while I can still enjoy my newfound cavalier side.
The next morning, I wake feeling much renewed. In the kitchen, I am greeted with a fresh pot of coffee brewed by Archibald. I pour a mug of the pungent liquid. I find Archibald humming as he waters plants in the greenhouse on the deck. Is he chipper because he is going to fire me? I wonder. Well, then, so be it. The concrete is already warm under my bare feet. I flop out in a deck chair with my coffee, making my presence known.
“Morning,” I brave. Now’s his chance.
He doesn’t look up from the pot of hot pink geraniums he’s deadheading. “It’s going to be a scorcher for May,” he says pleasantly, picking off the brown petals. “Have you ever tried gin-flavoured ice cream?”
“No, I can’t say that I have.”
“It is absolutely divine.” And that is that.
I lean against the chair and sigh. We are in West Vancouver, two blocks from the ocean. From the fourteenth floor, the water glistens magnanimously. The tired, grey city across the bay looks a long way off. What is it about water that I find so reassuring? Even the sound is soothing, a melody I never tire of, an unspoken promise. A cool breeze tickles my arms. Maybe the old man is going to behave himself from now on, I think, washed over by optimism. Maybe the tables are turning. All I needed to do was assert myself and he would capitulate and become the sweet elderly gent who had filled my pre-interview fantasies.
And then Archibald dies. Again.
We are in the Safeway. He has sent me in search of yogourt-covered almonds. I walk quickly through the polished aisles humming along to the elevator music, flip flops snapping beneath my feet.
I hear the announcement first, a tense, grainy voice over the loudspeaker: “Does anyone know CPR? We have an emergency at checkout six. Repeat emergency at checkout six.” The hair stands up on the back of my neck. Archibald.
I rush to the front of the store.
And there he is lying face first on the ground. The wheelchair he uses for long-distance outings since his hip replacement surgery lies tipped over dramatically behind him. He had been so pleasant, affable even, on the walk over! Not complaining that I was pushing him too fast or too slow or that the pavement was uneven. He had not mentioned the post-laundry-room incident once since it happened last week. Now I knew why. Now I knew why. He had been planning this! The chaos, the upheaval, the melodrama that had become his calling card.
A group of people have gathered around him in a half-moon, faces anxious, inconvenienced. People aren’t just supposed to drop dead in the grocery store! is their collective thought. They fidget nervously, cocooned together by a combination of concern and curiosity.
“Archibald. Archibald!” People make way for me. A small child whimpers. I squat down and turn him over. Grey foam is pouring out of his mouth and his tongue hangs out fat and limp. “Ugh.” I recoil and drop him. His head hits the ground with a dull thunk.
A woman gasps. The teenage checkout girl’s lips quiver in horror, thick braces protruding from her horsey lips. “Do something. Somebody help! Shouldn’t we put something under his tongue? Hold him down? I’m only part-time,” she whinnies.
“It’s okay.” I try to explain to the bystanders. “He’s done this before. He’ll be fine. He’s only pretending to be dead.”
They gape at me in mute disbelief. I look down at Archibald, who is now twitching all over, milking it for all it’s worth.
“He’s frothing at the mouth. He’s having a fit! He’s an epileptic!” shouts an obese elderly woman in a flowery muumuu.
“No, it’s the beginning of rigor mortis. I’ve read about it,” contributes a middle-aged man who smells like Old Spice. “He’s expelling his body fluids.”
“Sick,” mutters a blond surfer-boy holding a partially consumed bottle of milk in his hand.
“No, it’s a trick. He’s perfectly fine — well, he’s deranged,” I concede. “He does this for fun. For attention.” There is a murmur of disapproval. People look at me as though I’m the deranged one.
A spindly man with a shiny, bald head appears dressed in a red polyester vest and tie. The manager. His voice trembles as he speaks, “Don’t worry, folks. An ambulance has been called. We are taking care of everything.”
“There’s nothing to take care of! Don’t you get it? This man is faking. He has a screw loose! He should be committed. Take his pulse, you’ll see,” I urge. Didn’t they recognize a man pretending to be dead?
The manager bends down to take his pulse. Just then Archibald sits up, a puppet springing magically to life, with a blithe “ta da!”
His audience gasps. He makes his way to his feet with surprising grace, considering his hip issues, and bows as though expecting applause. But there is only shocked disapproval.
“He’s alive!” exclaims the Old Spice man, stating the obvious.
“What a wiener,” remarks a little boy, as he’s tugged away by his mother.
“Harsh,” says the surfer, with an edge of admiration.
Just then the elderly woman sways on her feet and collapses to the ground in a real faint, muumuu mushrooming out around her.
“Not another one,” the checkout girl moans. Everyone surveys the woman dubiously as she lays sprawled on the ground, waiting to see if she too will come to life, but she is, apparently, out cold.
Archibald peers at her in disgust and shakes his head. Someone has stolen his limelight. My mind rewinds back to the first time Archibald faked his death. It had been my third day, and he had keeled over in the elevator, giving me a front-row seat to his disturbed one-man show.
“I’m outta here, Archibald. I’ve had it!” My fury growing by the second, I storm out of the store. Enough is enough! I don’t care if I have to clean toilets to scrape together a living. My mom can excommunicate me. It’s not like she has done much for me in the first place.
Back at the apartment, slightly out of breath from my sprint back from the store, I begin shoving clothes into my suitcase. Archibald stumbles in a few minutes later, beet red, trying to conceal the fact that he is panting. He stands at the door to my room and peers in at me, mopping his forehead.
“Now I think I might really have a heart attack,” he muses.
“Good! You’re lucky they didn’t arrest you,” I say. I can’t even look at him.
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” he says dryly. “It was just a little amusement.”
“Amusement! Archibald, this is the third time you’ve done this. Died in public! And I’ve been here for just over a month.” My hands are shaking. I resist the urge to clamp them around his neck and squeeze. “Haven’t you noticed that people don’t find your play-acting amusing? It’s tasteless, cruel, and really, really rotten.” I turn my back to him, trying to think of more insults. But what he lacks in conscience he makes up for with swift verbal retorts.
“Well, most people have unfortunate taste to begin with. I was the highlight of their ordinary, dreary lives. This day will be earmarked in their imaginations for days to come. It was an outstanding performance, was it not? You have to admit I was rather inspired today,” he says congenially, as if we had been in collusion all along.
“Yes, Archibald. It was outstanding. Bravo.” I applaud. “One woman actually fainted, she was so overwhelmed. Maybe you’ll even get a review in the paper. ‘Man Dies in Supermarket. Gives Solid If Not Totally Authentic Performance.’ And now … I am leaving you to your sorry existence. I quit. You can torture someone else.” I slam the door in his face. He steps back just in time.
“Where is your sense of adventure?” comes his muffled voice through the door.
“Where’s your sense of decency?” I open the door and push past him, suitcase in hand. He pursues me through the hall, sweating like a rotisserie chicken.
“Okay, I can be challenging, I admit. And I’m not exactly cuddly.”
I roll my eyes at him in disgust.
“Difficult then,” he concedes. “On occasion.”
“Not news to me,” I say, lugging my bag to the door. My back gives a familiar twinge. “You can forward everything else to my mother’s address. That’s where I will be.” I hesitate. My mother’s resigned face flashes before me: “This is your last placement.”
“Listen, okay. I … apologize.” He speaks the word as though it physically pains him.
“It’s too late.” I fish through my pockets for his keys.
“That’s a pity. Just when I’d decided I’d like you to stay permanently. You have personality. I like that. Girls these days are so meek and mousy, but you’ve proven yourself to be a step above the assembly line. Of course, you are a little slow on the uptake…”
I look at him levelly. “You are so full of bullshit. I’ve had enough.”
“Where are you going to go? Catch a plane back to your mother? What is she … a hospital administrator?” He spits the words as though they’re distasteful. “So you can spend your days wiping old people’s asses and emptying bedpans in some death trap of a retirement home?” He clucks his tongue disapprovingly.
We stare at each other. My distaste for bodily fluids is the perfect ammunition. There I am in a polyester uniform spoon-feeding a babbling old woman while the TV plays soundlessly behind me. My mother’s shadow, Florence Nightingale crossed with Gloria Steinem, the uber-caregiver, looms disapprovingly in the background. I try to shove her out of my mind. Why did she always seem so much worse in my imagination?
“Permanent means I’ll give you a raise…” he says in his best used-car salesman’s voice.
I pause. I am suddenly exhausted. Where would I go from here? And he had a point. Money is money. I sigh like a world-weary prostitute. “How much?”
“Ten percent…”
“Fifteen percent and an extra week of vacation and absolutely no more ‘death scenes.’ The next corpse I stand over has to be real.” My voice is firm. “And no ass wiping, ever.”
“Scout’s honour. This ass is off limits to women of all ages, races, and creeds.”
“Deal.” I feel a tiny bit of satisfaction. I had met him head to head, and he had backed down, or something like that.
“Oh, there is one condition…”
“Condition? Now you give me a condition?” I pick up my suitcase again and square my shoulders against their weight.
“Well … not a condition, not really. More a request.”
“I’m waiting.”
“I’d like it if you would help me with the gardening, just until my hip stops bothering me. Look at it this way, it will give you another skill if you ever decide to quit again. You can always try landscaping,” he says dryly.
“Fine, but I do your shopping alone from now on.” I hold his gaze. “I’m tired of playing cat and the canary, or cat and mouse — or whatever…”
“I feel that I should warn you,” he pauses, considering his words very carefully. “I have a very vivid imagination. I will do my best, but sometimes it gets the better of me.”
“A vivid imagination,” I repeat blankly. What kind of a warning is that?
He sighs. “Now fix me a lemon daiquiri, will you? Heavy on the ice and everything else. And bring me a pain pill. I feel a migraine coming on. And make one for yourself. You’ve earned it.”
I hesitate, searching for confirmation that I am making the right decision. But no inner voice answers. Intuition, it seems, is not making an appearance. It’s just me, alone, in the hallway.
I turn into the kitchen with a sigh. “I’ll make a pitcher.”
Daiquiri Days
As the summer progresses, we fall into a daily routine that makes life tolerable if not exactly pleasant.
Maria, a small, fifty-something-year-old woman who wears her greying black hair in a military-style bun, smells of onions, and has a personality on par with curdled milk, comes in five mornings a week to handle the cleaning essentials. On our first meeting, she stood hunched in the kitchen, scrubbing furiously, in the middle of bleaching counters that, as far as I could tell, were already porcelain white. She cast a cursory glance over her shoulder at me, shrugged dismissively, and muttered in a thick Hungarian accent, “Not another one.”
Archibald’s schedule is straightforward on the face of it. He begins his morning with a half-hour of meditation. He claims to be a Buddhist, although I have my doubts. As far as I know, Buddhists rarely drink or gamble. I also often hear loud snores coming from his room in the far corner of the apartment, signalling that his “meditation” has turned into an extended morning nap. This is followed by physio exercises for his hip.
Reggie, his physiotherapist, is a handsome Jamaican man with smooth dark skin, a bright smile, and long, flowing braids. He maintains an easy, jovial air that seems untouched by Archibald’s frequent mood swings. At 6'4", he is also much bigger and stronger than Archibald, which I think keeps the geezer in line if only by physical intimidation. During his hour of physio, Archibald’s moaning, cursing, and braying can be heard throughout the apartment. Reggie appears unaffected. He leaves the apartment with a pleasant “Goodbye, Meggie.”
If it’s Maria’s day off, I prepare a simple meal. Eggs or toast and jam, and he skims the Arts and Current Affairs sections of the newspaper. The worst behind him, Archibald moves on to gardening, his favourite pastime, and, in the afternoons, on his best days, he works in his office on his next book, a collection of poems.
“I am an extremely slow writer,” he often remarks, “but that is what makes me outstanding. I ponder each word, taste its meaning. The flavour has to be — just so. Don’t let anyone ever rush you at any artistic endeavour. Art has its own clock.”
My role falls somewhere between that of personal assistant and health attendant. Thanks to my year of nursing school, I have basic first aid training. I give him his medication, help with his daily routine, set up his social calendar, which is surprisingly active, run his errands, and keep up with his correspondence. He has a decent following of admirers, most of them young to middle-aged gay men and middle-aged women, from what I can deduce.
If his writing is going well, he immerses himself for four or five hours in his office with its smooth mahogany desk from Nepal and snacks on tea and cinnamon toast later in the afternoon. If it’s less successful, he emerges to kick back a few tropical drinks of his own devising. By devising, I mean he concocts a drink I have never heard of and sends me back to make it again over and over until I get it right. “Less lemon, more sugar, you tart,” or “Let me introduce you to Tabasco. It is the reason a Caesar has any flavour,” or, after spitting out his drink and coughing dramatically, “Why don’t I just drink straight from the Tabasco bottle?”
He then plays cards or chess on a hand-carved ivory chess board, a gift from a “Spanish lover,” with whatever willing victim he can scrounge up. It’s often me, if I am unlucky enough to be at home. He never seems to tire of beating me. In fact, he is one of the most patient winners I have ever come across.
Although I often doubt their authenticity, I have to admit that Archibald has a gift for stories. “The secret to a good story, you must remember, is that it always has a beginning, middle, and end. People often forget one or the other in their hurry to finish.” He likes to recount, unsolicited, the most personal details of his life, which often revolve around his extensive sexual history. For instance, he treated me to the story of his first homosexual experience in “the bonnet” of a fire truck one day over lunch, but just as I became inquisitive, he abruptly changed the subject. He has an annoying habit of answering my questions vaguely or ignoring them altogether.
I find myself intrigued about his life history, despite myself. He speaks with a light English accent that I can’t quite place, having been to England only once when I was three. He was born in north London, he says, and grew up in pre-World War II Britain. At Oxford, he was a talented but lazy literature scholar. Inspired by the great thespian, Laurence Olivier, he dropped out to become an actor, but after a series of disappointing bit parts in London theatre, he gave up. He managed to avoid being drafted into the army due to his “unnatural proclivities” and then fell into gambling. He shared a cheap flat in the backwater streets of Chelsea where he found his debt growing like an “inflamed ulcer.” After being beaten within an inch of his life by two to six hired thugs (the number changes), he decided he had a choice: earn money honestly and pay off his debts or get the hell out of town. He chose the latter. After a lucrative night of craps (the gambling kind), he managed to scrape together enough money to secure his passage to Canada.
Living in Toronto in the late 1950s, at that point in his late thirties, he found himself centre stage in the bohemian art community. He churned out articles for various magazines to scrape by and partied with artists at night. While visiting Vancouver, a few years later, he met an attractive art student and took her home on a bet. He was forced to marry her when she became “overwhelmed with child.”
“Although I wasn’t the marrying type, it was the expected thing to do back then, and I always exceed expectations,” he remarked.
And despite his preference for men, they remained married for over twenty years. On the subject of his wife, he remains tight-lipped, withholding concrete information despite my curiosity. “She made fantastic soup, and she left me alone for a long while.” He carried out affairs with men over the course of his marriage “because what can be more exciting than a secret liaison?” But the marriage eventually ended in, I assume, a mutually agreeable divorce.
