An Ordinary Decent Criminal Part 8

He leaned over until I could see his nose.

"Yes?"

"You've got a lousy bedside manner."

He smiled and kept on pushing.

The peppermint nurse caught up with us and pushed something into my hands. "Mr. Haaviko? You forgot this ..."

This was a vase half full of dandelions that Claire and Fred had picked for me. The nurse exhaled loudly, wiped her brow theatrically, and left.

Claire stifled a laugh. "She likes you."

She sounded entertained as Leung pushed the chair up to the bench outside the doors and motioned for her to go on. My wife smiled on one side of her face and folded the stroller up while ignoring both of us. With effort I got my a.s.s to the bench and sat down, but Claire didn't add anything and I had to ask.

"Okay, I'll bite, why do you say that?"

Claire had the stroller in a small, compact bundle under one arm and Fred in a larger, squirming bundle under the other. "She had three b.u.t.tons undone and then did this."

She inhaled and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s rode up under a pale lavender silk blouse. Something tingled inside and I recognized the first real, concrete urge for s.e.x since I'd been beaten. Claire noticed and winked while Leung helped me to my feet and thought about what Claire had said. Then he added, "I'll talk to her."

The cab was waiting and a red-headed kid in his late teens opened the door and I let my family get in first.

Leung held out his hand. "Well, Mr. Haaviko, or Parker, or whatever. It's been a pleasure and I hope never to see you again."

I shook the strangely limp and lifeless hand.

"Ditto. There's a book out called How to Win Friends and Influence People How to Win Friends and Influence People. I'll send you a copy."

That made him smile and he bowed slightly at the waist. "Good luck."

Leung nodded to the driver and we left. Maybe ten blocks away we were long out of sight of the hospital so I kissed Claire and Fred and relaxed a little.

"Can we get out here?"

"Why? It's another, what? Six blocks? Something like that 'til home."

"I need the exercise."

We got out at the corner and she paid off the cabbie while I a.s.sembled the stroller and inserted Fred. Main Street ran parallel to the Red River and there was a wide park with trees from the edge of the street down to the water. Some people were fishing and others walking and the shops along the way were mostly small with not a single chain store or national brand in sight. Cars were parked up against the curb and people said h.e.l.lo and good day. The sun was bright and not too warm and we walked very slowly towards the river. As we went, we looked around at everything.

"Look, over there, a coffee shop with an attached diner. No Starbucks that I can see, no premium Colombian brew with extra caffeine for the added addiction factor, no smog, fewish panhandlers, low street crime. Too many cell phones, though. Not as bad as Toronto, thank G.o.d."

Claire was quiet and let me push Fred for a while before linking her arm through mine and taking over. "You do it all wrong. Let me."

We walked in silence and turned into the park past an empty baseball diamond and a small sandbox.

"I'm sorry but I have to tell you. I borrowed some money from my parents."

She wasn't sorry, not really, she was just being polite and I let it lie there between us as we pa.s.sed a hot dog cart and another one selling French fries. There were yells from down on the river as someone fishing caught something big, so we turned to watch the battle as a six-year-old boy wrestled a silvery fat-bodied carp into the air. There was a bench so we sat down and Fred started to snore loudly.

"Sam, c'mon, tell me, how do you feel about me borrowing the money?"

My first instinct was to lie, my second was to get angry but, instead, I just let it go. "Bad. Like I'm a failure. But there's nothing I can do about it. How much have we got in the kitty now?"

"The rent's paid for this month and one more plus grocery money for three weeks. Four or five if we go for welfare cooking, which is both hot and brown."

Long pause.

"Ground beef and macaroni."

"And liver and potatoes."

"Blech."

She pressed the side of her b.u.t.t into my hip.

I changed the subject. "It's a nice town."

Claire patted my knee and then squeezed my shoulder. Fred rolled over awkwardly and humped his b.u.t.t up until it was pointing at the sky. She stared at him and then spoke. "You sound wistful."

"Well, we're not going to stay, are we? Which means I can be wistful as I want in consideration of all the things that could have happened for us here."

I could see far away across Main where an elderly man in a white coat was sweeping the sidewalk in front of a barbershop. He used a corn broom and stopped as I watched to talk to a pa.s.serby. I started to say something and Fred farted loudly and startled us both into quickly hushed laughter.

When I could breathe again, I said, "Remember what they say in the Maritimes?"

"What?"

I put on my worst Newfie accent and did an impression. "Well, now, me boyo, your cough sure sounds better."

Claire snorted once and tucked Fred back under the light blanket. The old man across the street went back to work and then cleaned a spot on the display window with the edge of his sleeve and some spit. I talked as I watched the man. "You know, you'd never see that in Edmonton."

Claire nodded agreement. "Or in Calgary, or Vancouver, and certainly not in the big, bad, old Toronto. No one in any of those cities would ever sweep their own sidewalk. They'd wait until the city did it or the wind picked up."

"Yep. It's really a very nice town, all things considered. Friendly, clean, and we've got no past here. That's nice in a lot of ways. It gives some leeway just to be here."

Fred woke up and whined until I gave him my finger to bite. Then he settled down and went back to chewing on me and I thought about how many times I'd used that finger to hurt someone or to threaten pain, to extort or to steal. Fred's puckered face didn't care, though, he didn't know and he didn't care and I couldn't feel much else but love at that moment. Claire sat back and I could feel the tension leaving her body. Like always, she knew before I did. When she spoke, her voice was husky. "And you're clean here, so am I."

"Right. No one's looking for me that hard. And I've never had a real job and I'd kind of like to know what it's like."

She got up and helped me to my feet as Fred looked from face to face and blew spit bubbles.

"Right, well then, that's decided, so let's get home. I'm sure your d.a.m.ned dog has ripped the place to s.h.i.t by now."

As we walked down the road, I linked my arm back in hers. "Why is he my dog when he does something bad and your dog when he does something good?"

She laughed and refused to answer, which I felt was extremely unfair.

11.

"So, how do I look?"

Claire moved around in front of me and adjusted the tie.

"Like an ex-con looking for work."

I was wearing an expensive, pale gray suit with a pale blue cotton shirt and a pair of oxfords with steel toes, fairly useful remnants from a life of crime. They were good for kicking a door in or crunching up a kneecap without breaking a toe.

"But an attractive, reliable, honest ex-con looking for work, right?"

"Oh, yes. Gently changing the subject, she says, this tie. Have you ever untied it or did you just make a knot sometime last decade and leave it?"

"Yes. How can you tell?"

She pulled at the knot, which did nothing, so she stepped back to pick at it with her teeth.

"I was kidding. I was only kidding."

The clothes made me feel like a loser. These clothes were not me, these clothes were the ones I wore when I talked to the judges and the prosecuting attorneys. These were the clothes that translated into a badge of failure. Fred crawled over and bit my knee and I cheered up.

"You still love me, don't you, Fred?"

He kept chewing and I sat down and started to wrestle with him, which he seemed to like. Fred had my blond hair and Claire's chocolate brown eyes and a belligerent personality that he got from G.o.d-knows-where. He was ten months old and we'd conceived him in prison just after Claire and I had decided it was maybe perhaps time for me to go straight. The dog came over and licked us both, which made Fred grunt.

"Owf, owf."

"Claire, he said 'Daddy,' plain as day!"

She talked around a mouthful of silk or rayon or whatever the stupid tie was made from. "He said 'Owf,' which means 'dog.' More specifically, it means 'our dog.' Other dogs are 'Owwffa.' I don't know if it's plural or not. You really have to pay attention to what's going on. Changing the subject again, she says, this is a really ugly tie, but then you know that, right?"

I ignored her with dignity, the tie was eight years old and I'd wanted a black leather one but they had been out of style at the time. Fred grabbed Renfield and hugged him hard and I had to rescue him before someone ended up being seriously bitten. The baby kept squirming until I put him down and he started to crawl off into the dining room, looking for something new to destroy.

"Stand up." Claire retied the tie and stood back to admire her handiwork before handing me a leather carrying case marked N.S.T. in ornate gold script. It was old-fashioned and Claire had bought it at a garage sale in Edmonton before we'd left and now it held a copy of my resume, which was mostly lies. So far, neither of us could agree what N.S.T. stood for and we were getting increasingly wild in our guesses.

"Maybe it's from an atom bomb testing area and stands for 'No one Stands There.' "

Claire shook her head. "Maybe. But I doubt it. Maybe it's for a whale recovery program, 'Narwhales Sans-Teeth.' "

"That's worse than mine."

"Not by much. Go forth and gain gainful employment. I have a house to clean."

She kissed me and I kissed her and then out I went. Before I'd reached the end of the walkway, she had started up the vacuum cleaner and Renfield had started to bark at the thing invading his s.p.a.ce. At the end of the walk, I turned back to look at the two-storey house we were renting and shook my head. It still didn't feel like home. I really wasn't sure what home was, but this place wasn't. It wasn't quite comfortable or friendly and nothing was quite where it was supposed to be, although Claire had unpacked most of the boxes. She came to the window and made a shooing gesture, so I kept walking towards Main Street, enjoying the feeling of the weak sun on my neck.

As I walked, I looked at the houses on either side of the road. They were nice, two or three storeys high with poorly kept yards, most of which had toys scattered in the gra.s.s. A few houses were less well-kept. There the gra.s.s had been grubbed down until only bare dirt showed and the paint was flaking off the siding. Alongside those, neighbors had put up good fences to hide the eyesores. Everywhere were fragile elm trees, vibrant and only now starting to come into leaf. As I walked, I could hear the small mouths of caterpillars starting to eat in the trees and the flutter of young birds as they tried to eat the bitter green worms.

At Main I turned right and headed in the general direction of downtown. I was already starting to get tired but I needed to find a photocopying place. Claire had managed to type up an uncheckable resume, working on a second-hand Underwood, but there was only one copy. She'd claimed that working on the resume had given her something to do while waiting for me to be released from hospital. I finally found a place and had fifty copies made and asked the girl behind the counter where I could go for coffee.

"Um, I dunno. There's a 7-11 on the corner. Does that help?"

The copies of the resume went into my case along with a box of paper clips from a rack near the door, which I remembered in time to pay for.

"Actually, is there somewhere I could sit down for a cup of coffee? A restaurant, or bar, or hotel, something like that. Not a Starbucks, though."

Her brows unclenched and she aimed me towards a commercial bakery a block away with five round tables under an awning around the side. There were four other patrons, two old men sitting by themselves and drinking small cups of coffee, and a pair of middle-aged women in pantsuits eating pastries and drinking designer bottled water. I sat down and a minute later a young man with dark, curly hair, blue eyes, and a gold earring came out, holding a menu. He was wearing a set of white overalls and an ap.r.o.n, and crushed into his pocket was a chef's hat.

"Good morning, can I get you something?" His voice rolled over the consonants.

"Sure. Could I see the menu?"

He handed it over grudgingly and I noticed the flour on his hands and shoulders. I also noticed a great deal of black body hair that stuck out of the ends of his sleeves and out the top of his shirt.

"Do you work in the bakery as well?"

"Yes. With my brothers and father. We take turns taking care of the customers out here."

"That's fine. Could I get a large coffee with cream and sugar and whatever pastry you recommend?"

He started to smile and then recovered his game face. As he headed back to fill the order, I realized that maybe he was smiling because not many people asked his opinion. Smiley, a bad guy I'd known, had the idea that people like it when you defer to their opinion and they like it when you're polite and ask questions. That had led him to one of his mottos: "Be nice. Nice is good. Nice sets a standard. Then, when you get mean, the shock is strongest." So here I was, trying to be nice (without the mean at the end), and it seemed to be working.

The baker came out with my coffee and a Danish with a dirty yellow filling. Before he could go away, I gestured to get his attention.

"Is this a cheese Danish?"

He nodded.

"A real cheese Danish? Never frozen, no preservatives, no, G.o.d help me, additives? A real, honest to G.o.d, fresh cheese Danish? I haven't had one since Chicago years and years ago."

"Yes, it's real and it's very bad for you. Enjoy."

I did. When I was finished, I sat back and licked the tips of my fingers and then I drank some coffee. That was good but not in the same category as the Danish. When the baker came back, I accepted a refill for the coffee and motioned him close. "Do you guys do bagels too?"

He showed bad teeth in a broad smile and nodded.

"Then I'll be back."

Over the second coffee I clipped the copies of my resume together and then put them back into the case. Then I tipped half of the total bill and went on. I figured I could cover five or six blocks today and the same tomorrow, stopping for more resumes as needed.

When I reached home after three, I found Claire in the kitchen on her hands and knees with her head in the oven. I admired her b.u.t.t and listened to Fred sleeping on a pillow under the table in the dining room.

"My favourite end."