Hey Nostradamus! Part 17

I suppose I can phone Allison during the recess. I thought about her way too much last night.

There's something I don't like about her, but what could be her angle? So far she's gotten a good meal, maybe some free car repairs and two hundred bucks from me. Not much.

Who am I fooling? This woman owns me. And she knows it. And I can only pray that I get enough messages from Jason before she bares her fangs and starts upping the price.

Heather, get a grip: she's a North Vancouver widow -which is pretty much what you are, too - a widow who's trying to scam some bucks and hold onto a middle-cla.s.s facade before poverty sucks her down the drain like some cheap special effect.

Are Allison's actions criminal? One fact I know from being a stenographer is that just about anybody can do just about anything for just about any reason. Crime is what got me into stenography. I wanted to see the faces of people who lie. I wanted to see how people can say one thing and do another. It's all my parents ever did with each other, as well as with all their family members. I thought being closer to liars and criminals could help me put my family's lies into better perspective - but of course that never happened. At least I sometimes had entertainment.

Like a few years ago we had this woman, an elementary school teacher, who claimed she was at a baby shower when it turns out she was quite happily dismembering her father-in-law. I wanted to see that kind of lying brio. She maintained total composure while the defense team clobbered her with motive - money, what else? - and intent - she'd bought a kiddy pool a month earlier in order to contain the blood - plus there were receipts for hundreds of dollars' worth of bleach and disinfectants and deodorants, purchased from the same Shoppers Drug Mart where I buy my tampons and microwave popcorn.

Was there a big moral to any of this? Doubtful. But I do know that as a species we're somehow hard-wired to believe lies. It's astonishing how willing we are to believe whatever story we're tossed simply because we want to hear what we want to hear.

I suppose I also thought that being a stenographer hearing it all would somehow inoculate me against crimes occurring to me. Naive. But then, it was a seventeen-year-old me who made that decision. Imagine leaving your most important life decisions to a seventeen-year-old! What was G.o.d thinking? If there's such a thing as reincarnation, I want the nature of my next incarnation to be decided by a quorum of twelve seventysomethings.

What's this? Goody gumdrops - a recess while Joe Dirtbag buys time to find a conveyance form that every person in the courtroom knows doesn't exist. Rich people have their own laws; poor people don't stand a chance; they never have.

Tuesday afternoon 3:00

I was eating lunch in a cafe near the courthouse, picking at some romaine lettuce leaves while dispiritedly redialing Allison, when some French Canadian girls behind me, tree planters - teenagers with perfect skin and no apparent sense of grat.i.tude for what society has given them - began discussing vegetarianism and meat. Their descriptions of Quebec slaughterhouses were so foul that I almost vomited, though normally such explicit dialogue would only leave me curious for more. I stumbled back to the courthouse, found Larry who does shift planning and pleaded off sick for the remainder of the day - again. I drove home, where all I could do was lie beneath the duvet and think about where Jason's body is right now. Not his soul or spirit, but the meat part of him. Why is this so important to me?

I know he was no prince before I met him; as I've said, that was part of the attraction. As well, my chosen vocation prepares a person for the worst of what can happen to the human body, coroner's photos included, even in happy little Vancouver: bride burnings, and women tossed into wood chippers, then sent to the rendering plant.

G.o.d knows Jason had some gruesome images locked up inside him. After I met him, I called in a favor from Lori, who works in the archives. I asked her to pull photo files for me on the Delbrook Ma.s.sacre - the photos from the cafeteria. Well, all I can say is that the media does both a service and a disservice by not showing the real story there. I suppose there are Web sites where you can go look at this kind of stuff, but . . .

Okay, the fourth photo down was of Cheryl.

I stopped breathing when I saw her.

Her.

So young. Oh, dear G.o.d, so young. All of them. Just babies. And Cheryl's face was unspeckled by any gore, despite the battlefield around her. In the photo she looked serene, as if she were alive and suntanning. There was no fear there. None.

I put the photos back in the envelope; I didn't look at the rest.

Would Jason feel better if he knew that she'd died at peace? But he must have known this. If he returned, would I tell him I'd seen the photo? Would that drive him away or bond us closer?

If he returned.

b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

Why couldn't he have left me a clue? A simple measly clue. But no: "Just going out to get some smokes, honey. Want anything? Milk? Bananas?" He's dead. He has to be. Because he'd never simply leave me. He wasn't like that.

I keep on wondering which of his friends might have had some inkling of what was going on, but Jason was, aside from me, alone in the world. His family was one notch less than totally useless. I get so mad at them sometimes. I mean, his mother dragged him off to hillbilly country the moment the ma.s.sacre investigation cleared him; he never properly faced his accusers, and they must have felt they'd somehow won something in that.

Kent was dead, but he could have stuck up for his little brother instead of hiding behind a wall of midterms and religious hocus-pocus.

And there's Reg - Reg, why did you have to wait for the world to collapse around you before you became a human being? You two would have gotten along so well, you really would have.

And don't even get me going about Cheryl's plastic, mean-spirited parents. Hypocrites.

Even Barb gets a bit clippy when I talk about Jason too much.

Egad - I'm just venting here. It's merely me venting. These are all kind people. And I'm merely venting.

And I also can't get Cheryl's photo out of my head. I'm not the jealous type, but when it comes to her, what's a girl supposed to do? In the eyes of the world, Cheryl's a saint. Who else on earth has a saint for compet.i.tion - nuns?

But I don't think she was a saint - not judging by what I could learn from Jason. I think she was just an average girl who was maybe missing a sense of drama in her life. Since Jason's disappearance, I've had dinner a few times with Chris and Cheryl's parents over at Barb's; all they talk about is getting deals on cases of canned corn at Costco, the best price they got on Alaska Airlines tickets to Scottsdale, and the new next-door neighbors who don't use English as a first language. I've never heard them discuss an idea at the table, let alone give much thought to where Jason might be. My presence there possibly unnerves them. Jason said that they were vile and that they still suspected him of being the one who videotaped the gunmen and mailed the tapes to the press, but I didn't get any inkling of that from them. If anything, I sensed regret that they'd never gotten to really meet him.

As for Cheryl, I quickly learned that she could pop up anywhere. We'd be watching TV and *blink* there she was, her yearbook photo on the screen and a voice-over talking about crime and youth, or spiraling crime rates or crime and women. This was always jarring for me, but never for Jason. He'd smile slightly and say, "Don't worry." But you know, I saw his face. He was still in love with her. It's there.

What's bizarre is that I (being alive) have the compet.i.tive edge over her (being dead). Yet at the same time she (being dead) has the edge over me (alive but aging quickly, and not very well at that).

And then there's religion. Even though Jason said he'd shunned religion, I have this feeling that life, for him, was just a waiting game, and that he believed if he could squeak through the rest of his life, he'd meet up with Cheryl. How do I know that his disdain for religion wasn't short-term?

I tried talking to Jason about Cheryl, but his answers were politician's answers: "She was someone in my life so long ago. I was a kid." But she died in his arms in a lake of blood!

Jason also said a few things over the years to make me wonder if the tree, having been chopped down to the ground, was now sending new shoots out from the soil. For example, we saw a childhood friend of his, Craig, on the highway driving a Ferrari or one of those cars. Jason said, "Well you know, you can acc.u.mulate all the stuff you want in this life, but stuff alone can't make you happy. Craig there has to go around acting like he's a complete man, now. Right."

"You're just jealous."

"No, I'm not."

And he wasn't. Reg hasn't tried to convert me in the past months, nor even edge in that direction. He's far too preoccupied with the state of his own soul. Ironically, his honesty about his doubts has made him genuinely spiritual and has made me far more open to his ideas than I might have been otherwise.

I don't think Reg has realized this. When I'm around him, I find myself cross-examining my motives for everything I do. I think I'm a moral person, yet I'm always wondering if there's the ghost of Cheryl out there, watching me, saying, "Look out, Heather, don't confuse your morality with G.o.d's demands."

So it all comes back to Cheryl and my (let's face it) jealousy. Here's what I think: the five most unattractive traits in people are cheapness, clinginess, neediness, unwillingness to change and jealousy. Jealousy is the worst, and by far the hardest to conceal. Around Jason I made myself conceal it, because what else could I do? But I don't know how to kill jealousy. I fully expect it to turn into little steel fangs that'll clutch me like a leghold trap the moment I need to be most tender or forgiving. Jealousy is the one emotion that lies in wait.

Thursday morning 6:00

No sleeping pills last night, and Allison has revealed the full length of her fangs. First, a call came in from my car guy down on Pemberton: "Hi, Heather, it's Gary."

"Gary, hi."

"Heather, I've got some lady came in here, jittery old thing, like a librarian with the clap - got a whole bunch of repairs done on this old boat of a Cutla.s.s, and then she says you're the one who's supposed to be paying for all of it. I'm in the back room right now, and I just have to ask you if this is the case or what."

"How much, Gary?"

"With taxes, just over two grand."

"Holy - "

"That's what I thought."

I paused before saying, "Gary, I'll pay."

"You sure about that, Heather?"

"Yeah, I'm sure."

I put down the phone and tried to appraise my new situation coolly. I was her slave. Trust me, having one's paranoia confirmed can be a relaxing, almost sedative sensation.

The first thing I did was stop phoning her. I knew she'd phone me, and she'd only do so when she knew the time was right to strike. This freed me to do things I'd been neglecting. I cleaned up the place, as though performing an FBI crime scene sweep: I put everything of Jason's that held his smell in extra-large Ziploc freezer bags. All his toiletries - his razors, his brushes: bagged. His wallet by the fruit bowl: bagged. I bagged his dirty underwear and T-shirts and shoes. I also bagged all the clothing that was in his hamper. Once I'd isolated all his personal effects, I opened each bag and held it up to my face and inhaled for all I was worth. I wondered how much longer his odor would last. The smell of his cheap underarm deodorant made me cry. I drank most of a bottle of Bailey's and pa.s.sed out - much better than sleeping pills. I was woken up around nine this morning by a phone call from Larry, asking if I was okay. I said I was sick. I am sick.

I looked at the pile of Jason's things. I knew I had to start my life all over again from scratch. I could go to work, sure, but I'd be a husk. There was no way I'd ever meet anybody again, and in real life I'd become the invisible blank of a person I pretended to be in the courtroom.

So where do you start when you want to start your life again? At least when you're young you're also stupid. But me? Tick tick tick.

I made coffee and was going to call Barb when the phone rang. "h.e.l.lo?"

"h.e.l.lo, Heather. It's Allison."

"h.e.l.lo, Allison." My voice was stripped of spark, a prisoner's voice.

"I thought I'd call. See how you're doing. I had another message come to me."

"You did, did you?"

"Yes. And it was quite a long one."

"That's nice."

"Should we get together?"

"Yes, Allison, we ought to get together. Why don't I come to your office or wherever it is you work."

"I work from home."

"Why don't I come to your house?"

"Oh, no - I never let clients come here."

"How much is your rate for the session going to be, Allison?"

This was the clincher.

"Allison?"

"Five thousand dollars."

"I figured as much."

"So then where do you think we should meet?"

I knew that someplace private where I could wallop the c.r.a.p out of her wasn't an option, so I suggested a restaurant at Park Royal that catered mostly to older diners who liked b.u.t.tery European food. She seemed to like this.

"Oh, and Heather - "

"Yes, Allison?"

"Cash, please."

At one in the afternoon I met her there. It was odd pretending to be civil when she was in the midst of vile extortion. Allison said, "All this b.u.t.ter and oil - you'd think pensioners would take better care of their hearts."

"They're just waiting to die, Allison. Give it a rest."

Wiener schnitzels appeared on the table, but I didn't touch mine; Allison's vanished as though eaten by a cartoon wolf. As she downed her last bite, she said, "There. Now shall we get down to business?"

"Yes, Allison, let's."

"Do you have the payment?"

I showed her the money, in twenties, taken from the shared account Jason and I were using to save for a down payment on a small house. It was inside one of the leftover Ziploc bags. "Here."

She appraised it quickly. "Fine. I had a message last night. I don't known what any of this means, but here goes . . ." She then began mouthing the words she'd received. It was one of our favorite set pieces, involving Henry Chickadee, "Heir to the Chickadee Seed Fortune." Henry's story is that he spent his days in Aisle 17 of the local Wal-Mart saying, "h.e.l.lo! Welcome to Aisle 17. I'm Henry Chickadee, might I entice you to sample our wide variety of Chickadee Seed products?"

Sometimes Henry would be in his perch beside a small mirror, and when he went back and forth on his swing, he'd say "h.e.l.lo!" every time he saw himself. Henry didn't understand what mirrors were, or what they did, and if other characters tried to explain it, he'd just gap out. Pure silliness.

And so Allison sat there, in the middle of this geriatric restaurant reeking of b.u.t.tery foods, saying "h.e.l.lo! h.e.l.lo! h.e.l.lo." Even though this woman was evil, she delivered the goods.

"Was there anything else added on to that?"

"Well - " "Yes?" Fleeced or not, I was starved for connection.

"He says he misses you. He says he feels lost without you. He says he tries to speak to you, but he can't. He apologizes for having to speak through me."

My eyes were watering. I'd gotten what I wanted. Allison said to me, "I apologize for being hard to reach, but I have to do what I can to protect my channel into the afterworld."

"Yeah. Sure. Whatever."

"I'll be phoning you soon."

"I'm sure you will."

I didn't say thank you, and she didn't seem to expect it. She and her depressing pilled teal-fleece jacket left the restaurant. I threw some bills onto the table and followed her down the mall and out into the parking lot, where she got into her claptrap Cutla.s.s. I took her license number, went home and called Lori, my mole. She gave me the name and address of one Cecilia Bateman, at an address in Lynn Valley, a 1960s subdivision that had been missed by every scourge of redevelopment since. I waited until dark and I went there. I parked a few houses down from Allison's, on one of the neighborhood's steeply sloping streets. The darkened trees, in silhouette, seemed as deep as lakes. Maybe at some point in its past, this neighborhood was sunny and sc.r.a.ped clean, but now it was a place where you could torture hitchhikers in complete freedom, the loudest of screams never getting past the rhododendron borders. I felt like I was fifteen again, spying with my old friend Kathy on the Farrells who, as teen legend had it, were highly s.e.xed and given to orgies. The most we ever saw was handsome Mr. Farrell in his Y-fronts sucking beer and watching hockey, but to this day, Y-fronts get me going pretty quickly.

But back to Allison . . .

Or rather, back to Cecilia.