macCLOUD FALLS, page 31
Do nothing. Stay where u r. Call u when I get back. Xox
The reply was almost immediate. Darling! You got my msg? What d you say?
Haven’t read yr msgs. need time away
She waited a long time for the phone to ping again, but it didn’t. It just lay there, plugged into the car, charging. Was that too cruel? Should she call and apologise? What was in the message he’d referred to? She couldn’t move. She felt a pain in her breast, a sharp twinge where the scar was. What was he suggesting? That he leave his wife? That they should be married? She stared at the phone. It had the answer, but she wasn’t sure if she could bear it.
Then Gil appeared with Hero padding alongside him, happy as a sandman. He gestured the question, was she done, with a tilt of his head and she nodded, picking up the charging phone and laying it on the top of her open purse. If it buzzed she’d hear it. Gil opened the rear door and Hero hopped in. His nose poked through between the front seats and he rubbed it against her cheek.
‘Hey mister Hero,’ she said. ‘Nice walk?’ Gil seemed not to notice the tears in her eyes as she glanced at him, and if he did, he didn’t say anything. She pulled out onto the highway and off they went, as before.
‘So if the movie isn’t over, what do you think the woman on the plane from Calgary has in mind for us in Merritt?’ he asked her, after a while.
‘I don’t know. She keeps on surprising me, that’s for sure.’
Veronika grew silent then. Images of the past and other roads she’d driven merged with this, and the cars that passed. She kept a steady 90, holding the wheel lightly, and reached out to turn on the radio, but the channels were unfamiliar this far north. She pressed CD and KD Lang came through the speakers, her gloriously smooth voice instantly revealing.
‘I know this. Almost Country, Veronika,’ he said.
She only smiled and turned it up. The music filled the silence between them until they reached the limits of the town. At first it was just lot after lot of everyday houses, nothing in particular unusual about them, but as they reached the centre of town, the old colonial heart could still be seen, and what was more noticeable was a series of giant murals dedicated to country and western stars. Gil started to read the names out loud to her as they passed, but soon the density was too great. After Reba MacIntyre he gave up.
One brass cupola glinted above the other buildings, like a low-level minaret, and when they came to Main Street, they turned towards it. On the drive past, they both read out the name at the same time. Coldwater Hotel.
‘Looks perfect,’ he nodded.
‘You aren’t suggesting we stay at the Coldwater Hotel?’ she said.
‘I don’t know. Look at it.’ He drawled, ‘Straight outta the Old West, Veronika.’
She grimaced. ‘You’re never going to stop that, are you?’
‘Probably not.’
She parked in front of one of the murals, a huge painting of an old-time black vinyl 45 rpm record, completely covering the brick wall it adorned. Maybe it was even older than the wall, the royal blue central label looked it. ‘Smiling Thru the Tears,’ it was called.
‘That’s one for us,’ Gil said, nodding towards it.
‘Us? Why?’
‘You know, being ill. You do remember that we’re ill?’
‘Ah!’ she laughed, ‘Yes.’ But she was thinking of other things. He insisted posing her and Hero in front of the mural so he could take a photo. He said it was a landmark, and should be recorded. She didn’t feel much like having her photo taken, but went along with it. Hero stood magnificently in front of the black and blue background, so she leaned back against the brick wall, relaxed, and knelt down a little to be closer to him. And then he insisted that she take one of him and Hero as well. When she felt the shutter click, she knew he was right, that it was a great image. And a threshold. Maybe she could smile through the tears.
‘So, Veronika,’ he said. ‘Ready to take a look in the saloon?’
‘You’re joking?’
‘I just want to ask if they have hot water too,’ he smiled. ‘But seriously, come on, why not?’
She stood and took in the full sight of the Coldwater Hotel – ‘Est. 1909’, it said, and not changed all that much, it would seem. It did look like something out of a western, the kind of place where an upper window might slide open and a gunman would stick a rifle out. In fact, she could see the balcony the shootout would transfer too in later scenes.
‘Good location for the movie,’ she said, finally. ‘Okay. Let’s go, pardner.’
At the top of the steps to the wooden boardwalk, the entrance split two ways, to the saloon and to a diner. Hero was on his leash and seemed to smell dogs at the saloon door. When they asked if it was okay to bring him in, the bartender came out and made a fuss of him. There were a few drinkers at the bar, and one huge old bullnosed cowboy in a Stetson asked where they were from, so they said they were passing through on their way up north.
Gil ordered a beer and she a cup of tea. The bartender looked surprised, but unfazed. She chose a seat by a side window, away from the bar, near an exit.
‘It’s great,’ Gil said, sitting down. ‘I love it.’
‘If you say so,’ she said. ‘Feels a bit weird to me.’ But Hero seemed to like it, and settled down in the shade of the table while they waited for her tea. She suddenly looked up, as if noticing something, then pointed above his head. ‘See!’
He turned round in his seat. On the wall was a framed picture. He couldn’t see it properly at first. When his eyes focused, he burst out laughing. It was an old image, perhaps a nineteenth century engraving. ‘A Good Day on the Moor,’ the title ran. In it, an old Scotsman in a kilt sat on the heather with a good kill of grouse strung on a pole.
‘Well well,’ he said. ‘What did I say about New Caledonia?’
‘I’m beginning to believe you.’
‘You guys in town for the music?’ the waitress asked, as she brought the tea.
‘Pardon me?’
‘The music – y’know?’
The blank looks they gave were eloquent of ignorance. ‘The festival. You should check it out. Some great stars.’ She pointed to a poster on a pillar nearby.
‘You’ve brought me to a country music festival?’ Veronika said, incredulously.
Gil was grinning, straining to see the names and the dates. ‘We’re a couple of days early for the main acts,’ he said. ‘Unless you want to stay the weekend?’
She scoffed, but when the waitress came back with the check, he asked her if they had rooms here. She stood upright and took a double-take, caught Veronika’s eye, then smiled.
‘Yeah, we got rooms,’ she said, ‘But trust me, you guys wouldn’t wanna stay in them.’ Gil waited for more information, about outlaws or bedbugs or something, but the woman was gone as soon as she got the dollars.
Veronika smiled at Hero. ‘No, we wouldn’t want that, would we? You’d get fleas.’
‘Ah well, just a foolish thought,’ he sighed. She looked up from petting the dog.
‘An airline ticket to romantic places…’ she smiled, though for some reason the thought brought the tears to her eyes again.
The boy in the tourist place said they’d be lucky to find anywhere. The week of the festival was always the same, people booked ahead. Singers, musicians, crew, journalists. It was a big deal, he said. But he phoned around and found them a motel on the northern fringe of the town, one that didn’t mind dogs. A cancellation. It wasn’t too bad, he said. But when they got there it was a twin room, not two rooms.
‘Ah well, I’ve already spent two nights with you. A third won’t hurt, I guess,’ she said.
‘That’s quite some testimonial,’ he laughed.
‘Anyways, we’re only going to sleep here, it’s not as if we’ll be living in it. Just hope the sheets are clean.’ She dropped her bag. ‘I need to go find some shops. I need to buy a change of clothes.’
The three of them walked into town together, past a local diner that looked quite busy, and two rival truck dealers on opposite sides of the same road. The vast glitter of chrome and metal shone out as they passed, a loud beacon to drivers passing. They came upon a gang of workmen erecting a stage in the square, and another sorting out lighting. Still a third were putting together the scaffolding for some kind of theatre seating, and all the while a stream of country music came from the speakers they had already wired above the square.
‘The jukebox is playin a honkytonk song…’
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘Why don’t I let you two have a look around, see the murals, sing along, whatever, and I’ll go and buy what I need.’
‘Meet back at the motel?’
‘No, that diner we passed. At five?’
‘You can text me now, whatever. I can pick up your messages. You’ll be all right?
‘Sure. I can shop, wherever I go. I have an instinct.’
‘Shopstinct?’
‘Yeah.’
‘All right, lad. Let’s go see the town,’ he said.
She watched them walk away. ‘No, hang on. Let me take him. He’ll be okay outside a shop for a while.’ But she looked around uncertainly, as if dog thieves may be lurking.
‘Listen, why don’t we come with you. Wait outside the shops. Keep guard.’
‘Are you making fun? You better not be.’
He didn’t answer, but they walked on anyway, the three of them, through the mean streets of town, passing a shop advertising ‘cowboy supplies’. He stopped to gaze inside at the array of saddles and she pointed out a sign that advertised ‘gold pans’, joking that maybe he wasn’t too late after all.
Another block, and she found a couple of promising clothes shops and, in the second, a pair of cotton trousers and a couple of new t-shirts. One was a reprint of an early CPR poster of a beaver, which she kept on, as Gil liked it so much. She went back to try on a blouse she saw in the window, and in the changing room, she pulled the cell from her purse. It was blinking, buzzing. It was him. For a second she resisted. And then it stopped. She picked it up and scrolled through his messages:
I miss u. ?? Where r u?
Then she found the message she’d been half-dreading, half-dying for. The one she needed to reply to. The one where he would say the right thing:
It read: cd getaway fr the w/end, fly Kamloops, pick up car & meet u?
So that was his great suggestion. A stolen weekend somewhere. A cabin by a hidden lake. Again.
It was all too brief, too stolen. Even the text message read like it had been written on the sly somewhere, while his wife was doing something else, and he pretended to be on his phone to someone else. She could picture it, the scene, the room, the music, the view out the window towards the mountains above Squamish, their affected Earl Grey tea at exactly four o’clock. Their funny shared habits were the glue that stuck them together and as long as he was there with her, sharing them even though he claimed they were hateful to him, he would never be with her in the way he’d said he would. Some day.
There didn’t seem any need to reply. Her earlier message still covered it. There was no need to consider, as she had been doing all day with a part of her mind, the slim possibility that this suggestion of his was a radical redefinition of their relationship bringing about the thing that she had wanted for all these years… no, it wasn’t like that. There was no need to cry, really. That was done with, had been for weeks. She had known it when she flew east, even. Long before meeting Gil on the plane. Long before this.
Hero was waiting outside the shop, with Gil leaning against the wall, whistling, when she emerged again from the shop.
‘So?’ he asked.
‘No. Not me,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t right for me.’
They walked back towards the centre of town where the stage was now in place, and picked up the road to the motel. A shop caught Gil’s eye.
‘Look. Stetsons,’ he said, ‘Just what you need to set that t-shirt off,’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Like that’s going to happen.’
They sat on the deck of the diner so that Hero could be with them. He seemed to like the smells that seeped from the rear where the kitchen was. ‘Ribs and salmon, steak,’ she said, glancing over the menu. ‘Burgers. Pancakes.’
‘Good coffee?’
‘Let’s find out. I want a drink first. Wine.’
‘White or red, that’s what we got.’ the waitress said.
‘No wine list?’
‘That’s what we got,’ she repeated, and smiled vacantly.
‘Okay. White.’
Gil was petting Hero, who had stretched out on the decking under the table. She watched him for a while before he looked up and saw her, then the wine arrived.
‘I kinda like being with you,’ she said, after a half glass had been consumed.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Because you are. With me, I mean.’
‘I don’t know. Men are strange,’ she said. ‘But somehow you aren’t.’
‘We are twins, remember? Cancer twins brought together by fate in a movie being written by the woman on the plane from Calgary.’
‘Ah, the woman on the plane from Calgary. I’d forgotten her for a moment. I thought it was just us.’
‘The three of us.’
The wine went down well. Her sour mood soaked in the distilled sunshine in her glass and she tried to be happy. ‘So this is nice,’ she said, and winked, as she took another sip. He was playing with a coaster that read Ribs’n’Salmon and didn’t look up.
‘Anything wrong?’
‘Well, don’t tell me if you don’t want to, but… that message,’ he said, ‘The one that upset you this morning. Was that from him? The man you went to see?’
‘Ah! That.’ She took another swig. The wine, poor as it was, was helping. ‘Well, let me tell you, my Scotch friend, he doesn’t know where I am, who I’m with, and what’s more I am glad. It’s good.’ She poured more wine in her glass, spilled a little. ‘Oops!’ Hero stirred, but seeing no food, sighed and lay down again. She was a bit drunk.
‘It’s none of my business, I know.’
‘You’re right. It isn’t. But since you asked, I’ve told you. And the matter endeth there. Anything else?’ Her tone sounded light but false, she knew. But then their burgers appeared, a huge plate each with french-fries and salad. She ordered another glass of wine and a beer for him. He laughed, and nodded okay then.
She tried to stay in the moment over supper, but her mind kept drifting. At times she lost track of what Gil was saying. Something about Jimmy Lyle again. It was the wine, yes, and the long drive, but it was other things too. Her cell. Her purse. Him.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
‘I think I’m a bit tipsy,’ she said.
‘Aye, I think you could be right,’ he agreed, gazing at her.
‘Can we go?’
It was a short walk home but she was staggering. ‘I didn’t drink much. Did I drink much?’ she said.
‘Most of a bottle.’
‘Huh!’
‘Anyway, it’s very strategic of you to get blotto to avoid the discomfort of a third night with me.’
‘Blotto?’
‘Very drunk.’
‘Oh… no… don’t think that! It isn’t like that.’
He laughed. ‘Just teasing.’
She wagged a finger at him. ‘Don’t tease me. I don’t like it.’
Once they’d reached the motel room, she threw her purse on the bedside cabinet, and quickly fell onto the faraway bed. She lay flat out, her feet sticking off the end of the bed, staring up at the ceiling.
‘Wow,’ she said. ‘Country roads take me home.’
Gil sat down on the other bed and stretched out. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘they do that.’ He pulled off his boots. ‘Think I’ll take a shower.’
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Shower away.’
While he was gone, she changed into the nightdress she’d bought, switched the lights down and hopped into bed. She patted the cover and called Hero, who jumped up, budged around until he found a good way to lay out.
When Gil came out of the shower, she already had her eyes closed. He rounded the end of her bed and sat down on the far side of his, dried his hair off with a towel, and got between the sheets. Hero looked up at him, as if checking him out. They lay a long time like that, neither of them sleeping, but drifting into brief flights beyond waking. Only Hero’s breath was even and restful. Finally his calm relaxed them too.
In the middle of the night, she woke from a dream that had drifted into nightmare. She’d been wearing a hat and when she looked in the mirror it was a living rattlesnake. Hero was barking at it and if she could have thrown the hat off, he would have chased it away, but she couldn’t bring herself to put her hands near the snake to pull off the hat. And before that in the dream, the singer, the woman from the reservation.
She was sweating and had indigestion. She reached for her purse.
Gil was asleep in the other bed, she could hear him wheezing gently. Hero was still at her feet. She took the cell from under her pillow, but had no new messages. She lay down. The rattlesnake hat stayed in her mind’s eye. She tried to get rid of it by thinking of other things, but that didn’t work. At last the rectangle of window began to lighten behind the blinds and she found herself wide awake.
By the time Gil woke, she’d showered and straightened things, taken Hero for his morning walk to a football park where a carnival fair was set up, the rides all Western-themed. The sun wasn’t yet above the hill and the dew on the grass was cool on her feet through her sandals. Hero ran after a stick until he was tired and then they sat together for a while on the bank of the Coldwater River, she watching the sun rise, he the ripples of water, doing his best to restrain his bark.
‘Sounds good,’ Gil said, when she’d told him what they’d done. ‘I probably needed the extra sleep. You okay though? Not hungover?’
‘Nah,’ she answered. ‘I’m fine. So what do you want to do?’
‘Go to the graveyard? After coffee?’
