“Mr. Andrachuk I presume.” The screen door opened revealing a guy his own age in a dark blue suit, red spiked hair, straight nose, brilliant blue eyes, and a severely trimmed goatee. “John Boston.” Cyril shook John Boston’s hand, noting the gold watch and the gold wedding band. “Entre and come on in.” He stepped back and held the door wide enough for Cyril to pass, which was when he noticed that the man had a club foot, that one shoe had a three-inch sole and a snub toe. Cyril noticed this all in an instant, even as he was doing his best to not notice it, making a performance of gazing innocently around the foyer and living room.
The place was empty. He recognized the carved pineapple newel post at the foot of the stairs and looked up as if half expecting and half dreading Connie to appear—surprise, surprise, gotcha—but she did not appear, and he was relieved. “I’d offer you a chair but there ain’t one,” said Boston in a mock drawl.
“That’s okay.”
Discoloured rectangles—the ghosts of pictures past—darkened the walls above the wainscotting.
“You alright there, buddy? Lookin’ a little pale.”
“Are you the realtor or owner?” asked Cyril.
“My wife inherited it.”
So. Cyril imagined Connie’s life with this guy. What was he, producer, agent, entertainment lawyer? His teeth looked bleached, his haircut expensive, and a waft of cologne hovered—the aura of success. On the belt of his pleated pants hung a beeper. Cyril avoided looking at his shoe. Scenarios flew fast-forward through his mind regarding his foot. Birth defect? Injury? Had Connie married him out of pity? Or was he a jackal, a hunter, doubly ambitious due to his defect, and Connie the trophy proving he was not merely equal but superior. Cyril grew bold. “She grew up here?”
“Here? Naw. Calgary. Her parents picked it up a couple of years back. You know, enough already with the forty below winters. Time to retire to Lotus Land. Then they went and died before it could happen.”
“I’m sorry,” said Cyril.
“Hey. It is what it is.”
Cyril nodded. A man with a club foot knew more than enough about disappointment. “I had a friend when I was a kid. She lived here.”
“No shit.” Boston gazed around re-evaluating the house.
“Long time ago.”
“Cool.” He clapped his hands once meaning that while nothing would tickle him more than a long meander down memory lane it was time to get down to business. “We want to move in. Want the whole place done. Top to bottom. Inside and out. You got a crew? How’s your schedule? We want to get rocking.”
“Schedule’s good.”
“Right on. Just to let you know I am talking to other contractors.”
“Of course.”
Boston produced a card, holding it slotted between his middle and index fingers, a rich and glossy red with raised black lettering. B.E.I. Boston Energy Inc. “Listen, I gotta jump. Take a look around and get back to me tonight. Cost. Time. Or is that too hop-hop?”
“No. No problem at all.”
“The best paint. None of that Chinese shit.”
Cyril wasn’t familiar with Chinese paint.
Boston clapped him on the shoulder, shook his hand again, held out a key, then headed for the door with a surprisingly smooth stride. Had he practiced back and forth in front of a mirror? Worked with a personal trainer? “Lock up then put it through the slot.” And with that, John Boston of Boston Energy Inc. was going down the steps, no clump and bump but quiet as anything, and Cyril was alone in Connie’s old house.
Late afternoon sun slanted through two small stained glass windows with tulip designs in green and yellow. He stood so still that he could watch the coloured shapes crawl as slowly as sea creatures across the floor. Shutting his eyes he listened, trying to hear the echo of Connie’s voice, feel the echo of her presence. He wandered into the kitchen, onto the back porch, observed the remnants of an extensive garden, peeked into the bathroom, then, at the foot of the stairs, recalled standing on this same spot all those years ago and wondered at the time that had passed and what he had done with his life, a question that seemed to be recurring a lot lately. He climbed the steps. At the top the air smelled trapped, not simply hot and stale but troubled, as though haunted by unresolved desire, and he imagined unhappy ghosts—were there any other kind—drifting along the corridor, dragging their chains like Jacob Marley. He faced the door. Thirty-three years had passed since the last time he’d stood here. He held his breath and listened, imagining her on the other side of the door biting her lip trying not to laugh, waiting with one of her swords.
He gave his head a shake and went down the steps and out the door. Before locking it he could not resist putting his face to the glass and peering through. No, Connie was not standing at the top of the stairs wondering where he’d gone. He slid the key through the slot and heard it clatter. When he got home he left John Boston a message saying he couldn’t take the job.
“Bernard Borgland,” said Gilbert on the phone. He spelled it out, “B as in budgie, ‘o’ as in ornithology, ‘r’ as in raven, ‘g’ as in goshawk, ‘l’ as in lapwing, ‘a’ as in abracadabra, ‘n’ as in nut-job, ‘d’ as in dodo. My advice, my friend, should you decide to heed it, is to phone him, ASAP pronto. He’s a good man. Moral fibre, all that noble stuff. Rare in these decadent times.” Cyril wrote the name and number in the corner of the sketch he was making of an orange with a fork stuck in it. “He’s waiting to hear from you.”
Cyril panicked. “What did you tell him?”
“Nothing you haven’t told me.”
Cyril tried recalling what he had told him.
“Towhees and goldfinches at the feeder. And there, the grosbeaks are back! Gotta get my camera.” Gilbert hung up.
Cyril stepped onto the porch and watched three limos follow a hearse up the cemetery roadway in a stately progress between the concrete angels, the pitted Madonnas, and mossy pillars. He thought of his mother watching this. No opera lover attended Carmen more rapturously than his mother watched these death processions. “The coffin was all silver and brass and I don’t know what,” she would say. “So many roses like you never saw. And lilies. Heaps. I opened the window and I could smell them. Mourners, maybe two hundred. They cried—and they meant it. I can always tell when they mean it.”
The affair underway right now was small, about twenty people. The gravediggers Ron and Derrick stood dutifully to attention by the shed. Cyril wondered whether their views on mortality were grim or optimistic, or had the simple fact of repetition—grave after grave, hole after hole, dug up and filled in—drained the metaphysical angst from funerals and made the entire business mundane? Living across from a cemetery hadn’t done his mother any good. She’d escaped the killing fields of Eastern Europe only to come here and be reminded every day of death.