Skinnybones and the Wrinkle Queen (16 page)

As she gets my walker ready and finds me a sweater, I tell her, “If the fashion modeling thing doesn't pan out, you should consider writing fiction. Only you may want to try coming up with names Dickens hasn't already used.”

The car has been baking all day in the hotel parking lot and she turns the air-conditioning on full blast as soon as the key's in the ignition.

“Something less than a windstorm would be nice,” I say. “You have some idea where we're going for dinner?”

“There's a restaurant on Fourth Avenue.” She looks at me out of the corner of her eye.

“Fourth? You want to get into bridge traffic?”

“It's not hard,” she says, waiting for a break in the Beach Avenue rush-hour traffic. “I checked the map. We're really close to the Burrard Bridge.”

On Fourth Avenue Skinnybones gets to try parallel
parking. A lot of angry drivers pull out around us during the process.

“Maybe Herb needs to give you a few more lessons,” I say.

She scowls as we go into the restaurant.

“So, how was your afternoon class?” I ask her when we've placed our orders.

“The woman who's having us do exercises is a Nazi. Her name is Waltraud and there's this guy in the class, Ethan, who calls her Well-trod because she looks like she's been around the block a few times.”

The server is quick to bring us our drinks. With a double brandy in hand, I can even forgive her for sprinkling her waitress chatter with “you guys” and “no problem.”

“Brad, now, he's a different story.” She's rooting for something in the bag she's brought with her. “You know, the one I told you who looks like Jude Law? He took photos of everyone this morning and printed up five for each of us.”

She pulls the photos out of a manila envelope. Skinnybones
is
photogenic, kibitzing around in an outfit that looks like a mixture of something Cary Grant would wear and Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp costume.

“He's a good photographer,” I agree.

“Tomorrow we're all supposed to bring something really dressy to put on for the photo shoot. What do you think — the green dress or the black?”

She chatters on about the class, but I can see, at the back of it all, some fear that the forces of social care and moral retribution might well swoop down on us before the week is out.

“Who did you talk to on the phone?” I ask her.

“Shirl.” Tamara toys with the croutons in her Caesar salad. “I guess Mr. Mussbacher went by your place on Saturday just to see how things were going and discovered there was no one home. Had the police come and open the place up. Check the garage.”

I signal the waitress and tell her to bring me another of the same.

“A double Courvoisier?”

“That's what I said.”

“No problem,” she gushes.

The Wrinkle Queen is pretty well blitzed but I suggest a drive out to Jericho Beach and she agrees. I think she's sick of being in the hotel all day. While we sit at one of the patio tables outside the restaurant and she has her smoke, I check the map for the best route to the beach.

The rain of this morning has cleared away, and the few leftover clouds seem to have stuck around as props for the sunset. I know about Jericho Beach because during coffee break Christophe told me he's been going there every evening since he's been in Vancouver. It's a good place to walk his aunt's dog.

I find a bench for Miss Barclay, but she's having trouble keeping her eyes open. It looks like she's okay sitting up, though, with one of those big Vancouver trees on one side of her and her walker on the other.

There's a guy walking a dog along the beach and, as he gets closer, he waves.

I walk down to meet him. It turns out Christophe isn't so shy when there's just the two of us and an old German shepherd. Huckleberry.

“Named by my aunt.” Christophe smiles. “Her last name's Finn.”

“Hi, Huckleberry.” I scratch behind his ears and he licks my hand. “Huckleberry Finn. Huckleberry hound.”

Christophe is from Kamloops.

“Cowboy country,” he says. “I'm scared of horses, though. They're even scarier than Waltraud.”

He tells me about the dress-up outfit he's taking to class tomorrow. His grade twelve grad suit.

“It's not really Armani but it looks like it. Are you through school?”

“Not yet,” I say. “I've got a few courses to pick up yet.”

“Shall we walk?”

Huckleberry's ears perk up.

“Okay — but not far. I need to keep an eye on my...my grandmother. She's on the bench having a catnap. A little too much brandy with supper.”

Christophe picks up a piece of driftwood and chucks it far out onto the sand. As Huckleberry goes bounding after it, he touches my hand and turns toward me.

“You're her, aren't you?” he says. “The runaway girl with the red Buick?”

“What?”

“It was on the news.” He doesn't lose contact with my hand. “At my aunt's, we always eat at
TV
tables in the den. And tonight...” He picks up another stick for Huckleberry. “Tonight there was a story about a teenage girl from Edmonton who's gone missing with an elderly woman.”

“Shit.”

“Seems the girl phoned and said they were in Jasper but gave some false names. So...they're trying to decide if she's been kidnapped or if she did the old lady in and took her car, or if the two of them are just doing their own Thelma and Louise thing.”

“I guess everyone will know by tomorrow.”

We head back to the part of the beach just down from the bench where Miss Barclay is snoozing.

“Maybe not,” Christophe says. “Most of the kids in the class probably aren't news watchers. And Brad...I think he's likely too busy playing with digital images on his computer, or out having a good time. Now Waltraud...maybe. Although I expect she's more into bondage videos. And Ava? What would Ava be watching on
TV
?”

“A Dolly Parton special?”

“Yes!”

Christophe and I high-five each other.

“I won't breathe a word,” Christophe says. “I want you here all week.”

We walk back to the bench. Miss Barclay is awake now, smoking. Huckleberry sniffs her red patent-leather shoes and then pees against the leg of the bench.

“Where did that pathetic creature come from?” she says.

“I hope you don't mean me,” Christophe laughs and nods to the Wrinkle Queen. “I'm taking the course with Tamara.”

“A chance meeting.” She gives me one of her looks. “I'm afraid I'm tiring, my dear. I think we'd best get back to the hotel.”

Christophe opens the car door for her and puts the walker in the back seat.

“Cool wheels!” he whispers to me before he and Huckleberry begin running back the way they came.

He winks at me when I come in fifteen minutes late the next morning. I decided to drive and park in the church parking lot rather than carry the opera dress seven blocks, but I hadn't thought about what Vancouver traffic can be like during rush hour. The Wrinkle Queen, of course, was sleeping when I left, so I wasn't able to check with her about taking the car. For
only seven blocks, though, I figured nothing could go wrong. Besides, how would she even know?

Ava is in full swing, going on about color combinations. She has Ricci, a girl with pasty skin and hair that's been dyed blue-black, in the make-up chair.

“Now this works wonderful,” she's saying in her Minnie Mouse voice, as she drapes a chartreuse green scarf against Ricci's neck and over her shoulders. “See how it brings out the green in her eyes.” She pauses to suck in air. “And, you know, if we add a bit more green eye shadow, the effect is even more dramatic.”

When we get into our formal outfits, Waltraud has us do different runway combinations. Solos, in twos and then trios and four abreast. Brad has some techno music with a thudding bass on the boom box, and he's busy taking a thousand pictures. When the catwalk drill is finished, he has us pose against colored panels he's brought in.

“Always arch your neck, Tamara,” he says to me, “and tip your head a bit to the left. That's it. Perfect. Now let's try one of you holding an American Beauty rose. Yes, inhale, even more deeply — and a little less smile...”

I ask him to take some pictures of Christophe and me together — as if we're on a prom date. The bit of face cream and color Ava has put on Christophe's face
makes him glow under Brad's lights. He's shiny and handsome with that kind of shy look that would be great in a GQ ad.

“Send your resume to Calvin Klein,” I tell him when we're finished.

“Yeah, right.” He laughs softly. “Let me get out of my monkey suit and I'll walk you to your hotel.”

“We don't have to walk,” I tell him. “We can drive. The car's right outside.”

But when we go outside, the parking lot is practically empty and the Buick is gone.

Skinnybones has her fashion school Twinkie with her when she comes back at lunch time. Thankfully, no overweight police dog. Both of them look like they've stared over some ledge and seen the end of the world.

She's late, which I find annoying, but there's still time to drive me to the beauty parlor over on Burrard where I've set up a full afternoon of appointments. Massage. Nails. Pedicure. Hair. She can leave the car and pick me up after class.

“Can't,” she says when I tell her the schedule. “No car.”

“Now, Tamara,” I say, “that's not even remotely funny. If you're trying to irritate me, you're doing a good job. First of all you're half an hour late and now...”

“It's gone.”

“What do you mean?”

“Someone stole it from the church parking lot.” She sits down on the chair by the door and begins to cry.

This is totally unnerving.

“What was it doing at the church parking lot?”

The Twinkie tells me the rest of the story.

“I knew you had nerve.” I light a cigarillo. “But I never pegged you for a moron. You're not even supposed to be driving on your own.”

“I'm better on my own,” she sobs. “You just make me nervous.”

“And how could someone take it? You have the keys.”

“I thought I had the keys but when I checked, I didn't. I was rushing to carry my outfit into class. I must have forgotten...”

So this is it, I think. The twilight, the world burning, Valhalla crumbling.

“I'm going to phone the police,” I say as I finish my smoke. “That Buick is worth a fair chunk of money.”

“If you phone, it'll all be over.” Tamara's voice is small.

“Read my lips, Tamara,” I say. “It
is
over. They're going to be taking us home.”

“You want that?” she flares. “You want to go back to sneaking around to have a smoke, stupid idiots trying
to get you to make Valentine cards and paper snowflakes like you're in kindergarten...”

I pull out another cigarillo, and the model boy rushes over to light it.

I remember when I bought the Buick. On sale just before a new year's releases. Fully loaded. An opera recording never sounded as good as it did on that car's sound system. I can recall driving down Jasper Avenue in Edmonton and some twit with a deliberate five o'clock shadow and hair sticking up in Vaseline peaks was playing rap rubbish tuned to illegal sound decibels, and I turned the “March of the Toreadors
”
up as high as the volume would go and opened my window. He stared at me like he'd encountered an alien force.

“So you want me to just let it go. Let some Davie Street druggie drive away in my Buick and no consequences.”

“Yes!” she screams. “If it'll buy me time. We don't need the car right now.”

“It'd probably be better to go to the police,” the young man says. His face is red with the embarrassment of the scene. “In the long run —”

“I don't care about the long run,” she yells at him. “I just want to do the course. I want to be a model.”

“I know,” he says softly, and squeezes her shoulder.

“Pick up the phone,” I tell her, and I'm pleased my
voice is strong, not the betrayal it sometimes is these days.

“No,” she whimpers.

“Pick up the goddamn phone. And call a taxi. I am going to the Aloe Vera on Burrard Street. I am going to get my hair done. I am going to have a manicure. And a pedicure. And a massage. And then I'm going to go to the lounge in the nearest hotel. I can do it without your help, Tamara. In fact, I think it would be very good if we don't see each other for a while.”

It's the Twinkie who phones and then helps me to the elevator and out onto the street.

“Do you want me to call the police?” he asks as I get into the taxi.

“No,” I say. “In for a dime...”

He gives me a little salute as the cab pulls away.

The masseuse at the Aloe Vera is sweet and gentle. I can imagine her as Suzuki, the maid in
Butterfly
.

“That feel good, eh?” she says after working on my shoulders. “Lotta stress there.”

“You've got that right.”

The girl who does my nails isn't quite as gentle, but at least she isn't a chattering twit like the hairdresser.

Agnes-Anne.

“So you're from outta town.” Agnes-Anne clicks the blades of her scissors like they're some instrument in a
mariachi band. “A lot of our outta town customers come back when they're in Vancouver. Probably it's because Aloe's what I call a one-stop come in and relax and drop parlor. Get everything at once. Not many shops'll bring you a cappuccino while you're getting your hair dried but we've been doing it — golly — almost since we opened. You wanna try this new shade of black? Perfect for your complexion. Midnight cherry — just a touch of red in it. And I can see you like to wear red so it all works.”