The Chrome Suite (14 page)

A display of jewelled ties and key chains hang from a wire in the window, their semi-precious stones gleaming in the shell lamp’s light. Mel sees Mr. Hardy sitting on a stool at the counter, his visor pulled low on his forehead as he hunches over a pool of light. He must have just emptied a tumbler, Mel thinks. He taps on the window. Jill protests and then groans as the man beckons for them to come inside.

The bell above their heads tinkles softly as they open the door. The shop smells arid, of sand and of the elderly couple Mel and Jill know from the United Church. Mr. Hardy used to usher. The Hardys are rock hounds and have turned their hobby into a
business. They travel to New Mexico or Arizona every winter in search of precious and semi-precious stones. Jill follows Mel through the narrow aisle in the centre of the cluttered shop. Dusty showcases display oddly shaped rocks, rocks split open to reveal bristly purple quartz crystals, and some shells too, a polished moon shell, its centre resembling an intense blue eye. It’s the sound of Mr. Hardy’s shop that Mel likes. He likes the grinding sound of the drums on shelves all about the room, rocks tumbling and sliding through sand and water, each canister seeming to revolve at a different speed. Mr. Hardy holds a stone out for them to admire. “Moss agate. I sent for it down in Iowa.” His hand shakes with excitement. The cream-coloured stone feels cool and heavy in Mel’s hand. Green trees of moss sprawl across its convex surface. “Look at that, son. There’s a world inside that stone.”

Japan, Jill thinks. A volcanic mountain range framed on both sides by bonsai trees. “Nice.”

“Oh my, yes, I should say so.” He chuckles softly. The man has always been rather solemn; taciturn, people say. But he’s become a new person now, he tries to explain to anyone who cares to listen. He met Jesus Christ in the desert of Arizona and gave his life over to him. In the past his faith had no substance, he says, like the faith of most of the people who worship in the seven churches of Carona. So he crossed the road to the new church, the Alliance Gospel, and was pleasantly surprised. However, the congregation of worshippers, who came from all over, weren’t surprised to see the Hardy couple; they’d been expecting them because they had been praying for them. The people of Carona have noticed the change, how the reclusive couple has become more outgoing, friendlier, though most aren’t comfortable with the weekly meetings the Hardys have begun to hold in their living room. A prayer cell, they call it. An exclusive holy few who are tight-lipped about what it is they pray for.

Jill goes over to the pan sitting on the counter and stirs through wet silica sand and polished stones. The man’s hand drops down on top of her head. “Choose something you like.”

“It’s okay,” she says, wondering what makes adults think that children like to be touched by them. She almost prefers the crabby, aloof Mr. Hardy to this new model.

“Go on.” His long fingers reach down and pluck up an almost clear purple stone. “Amethyst. It’s an ancient gem. Even mentioned in the Bible. In the new Holy City. I could set it into a nice little pin if you like.”

“I like it like this.” She hears car doors slam and then people’s voices as they pass by the window. Her tongue quivers for the salty fish. Mr. Hardy reaches around her, picks up the pan filled with polished stones, sand, and water, and holds it beneath the lamp. He swills them around. “I was a proud man, once.” His voice becomes scratchy and unnatural. “See this?” He tilts the pan so they can see. “This is what God’s doing to me now. Smoothing the edges off the old curmudgeon.”

Jill drops the stone into her pocket. “We promised our mother we wouldn’t be late,” she says, nudging Mel in the side.

Mr. Hardy smiles down at her and nods his approval. He puts the pan aside and plucks a tract from a stack beside the cash register. “Here.” He hands it to Mel. “You might like to read a bit of this before you go to bed tonight.”

“Amen,” Jill says as they step from the store.

“Where does he get off? He gives you a stone and me a lousy religious tract.” He crumples it and tosses it into the street. “What am I, second class?”

“A sinner.” Her laughter echoes in the buildings across the street. “Here.” She presses the piece of quartz into his palm.

They pass by Ken’s Chinese Food. The ivy-covered windows glow with light and activity as Ken, a tiny man, and his two equally
diminutive sons dart from table to table in the almost-full cafe. A fan above the door turns out warm air and the smell of ginger into the street. Beyond they see the flare of a match: Garth standing on the steps of the hardware store, lighting a cigarette.

“So, what’s up?” He sounds annoyed, as though he had better things to do than meet Mel.

“You’re going to have to get me some pickled herring.” Jill’s craving throbs like a toothache. She sits down on the bottom step and hugs her knees.

Mel slides the mickey of whisky from his back pocket and holds it up to the light. “We didn’t drink much. Must be two bucks’ worth here.”

Garth snatches the bottle from Mel, and, as the headlights of a car sweep across them, he slips it inside his shirt. “I don’t give refunds,” he says. He smiles with one corner of his mouth. He spends hours in front of the mirror practising that smile.

Mel feels a surge of envy as the grey Impala sweeps by and he recognizes several grade-twelve students who will soon graduate. Probably going to the city to take in a movie. He imagines them entering a nightclub using false identification.

“Come here.” Jill reaches out and pulls Garth down beside her. She winds an arm around his neck. “Come on, Cuz, you can do it. Go over to Waller’s and get me a jar of herring.”

“You serious?”

“Serious.”

“What, is she really serious?” Garth asks Mel.

Mel shrugs. Television screens in Josh’s store window flicker with bright images, and, above, in the suite of rooms where he lives with the two women and Elsa, the windows glow with the light pressing softly against orange curtains. One of the windows darkens with the shape of a person passing back and forth behind the curtain. Mel wonders if it’s Elsa.

Garth yanks at Jill’s hair. “It has to be herring, eh? Nothing else will do? What brand do you want?” he asks as he gets up and shakes the creases from his drape pants. “Not bad, eh? Thirty-six inches at the knee.”

“And twelve at the ankle. We know, we know,” Mel says drily. Garth has been the first in Carona to wear the baggy draped pants which, he boasts, he wheedled his mother into bringing back from Grand Forks, U.S. of A.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Garth says and saunters off into the shadows. But he knows he can get what Jill wants because he is a thief. He was born a thief. He possesses a cunning intuition about people and their movements. He knows which of the young women in town “has the mitt on,” which women “have a bun in the oven.” What kind of underwear they have on beneath their clothing. He admits to having snuck into houses and stuck pins into packets of condoms lying inside drawers of bedside tables. But few people in Carona know this side of Garth Johnson. They know him as a congenial, if not a bit smart alecky, boy. He is, after all, the son of Reginald, who is the son of Thomas, and so on. Those who know him well keep silent and Garth delivers whatever it is they want.

He emerges minutes later from an alley halfway down the street. His white shirt shifts from side to side as he passes beneath the streetlights. Cocky, Mel thinks as Garth flips something in the air and catches it with one hand. Pickled herring, Jill realizes. Saliva swells in her mouth.

“Waller’s working overtime,” Garth says. He grins. “Had a hell of a time getting past him to get these.” He sets a carton of eggs down on the steps beside the jar of herring and Jill plucks up the glass jar and twists open its lid. “Oh, I love you, love you, I love you.”

Big deal, Mel thinks and glances up at Josh’s window again. There are two shapes in front of the window now. Two women; he can tell by the outline of breasts.

Jill reaches through sliced onions at the top of the jar and the smell of fish and brine rises. Blue skin slides up through the opaque slivers of onion. She opens her mouth, bites, and feels immediate gratification. Yes, this is it, her tastebuds say.

Garth and Mel watch in silence as Jill sucks brine from her fingers and then eats another large chunk of fish. Her mouth glistens as it moves up and down, sideways, grinding flesh between sharp teeth, gulping back the salty liquid. She is oblivious to all as she eats and eats. When she has devoured half the jar of herring they can no longer bear to watch the brine dribbling down her chin and her tongue darting forward to clear it away. Garth opens the carton of eggs and gathers up a few. Several people leave Ken’s Chinese Food and so he waits for the noise of their car engine to cover the sound of eggs breaking against Josh’s sign. He drops back into the shadows. He glances at Mel who is still standing there, hands in pockets, looking up at Josh’s window. The two women have moved together in an embrace. Their heads come together. Dancing, or kissing, Mel thinks.

Garth laughs, a brittle fox bark. “Didn’t think old Josh could still get it up.” The two figures part and it becomes clear to him then in the silhouettes of their bodies that it is two women. Garth’s jaw drops and then his lips curl in a half smile. “Dykes. Bloody dykes, I’ll bet.” He laughs and throws an egg and Mel sees it break against Josh’s sign. “Here, your turn.” He offers Mel an egg.

“No way. Forget it.”

The egg arcs through the air and they hear the soft crack of it as it hits a window. White eggshell slides down the glass pane. The curtains part suddenly and a face appears and hands cup eyes against the light in the room. “You’re a little chicken shit,” Garth says with a touch of bitterness.

Mel is stung by the inference that he’s a coward. He wonders if Garth can see the imprint of a foot on his shirt. “Elsa fucks like a mink,” he hears himself say and instantly wishes he could take it back.

Garth, who is about to throw another egg, stops, arm still held above his head. He brings it down slowly as the news sinks in. It’s seldom that he is not the first to know something. “You’re kidding. Interesting …”

The light in the room blinks out and Mel can see the sharp features of Adele as she peers out at them. “We’d better get going.” Mel looks down at Jill who is hunched low between her knees. Her body convulses as she begins to retch, and then she vomits and half-chewed herring splashes down onto the sidewalk.

Jill and Mel cut through the alley behind the hardware store, walking towards home in silence along a tree-lined street that runs parallel to Main Street. They pass by the Hardys’ small cottage where in the living room a handful of people kneel in front of couches, chairs, the piano bench, unmindful of creaking joints or sore knees as they pray for individual people in the town of Carona, including Margaret and Timothy Barber. They pray that the breath of the spirit will quicken the steps of the unredeemed towards their Redeemer. As Jill and Mel walk down the street, the sky above Carona begins to grow lighter. Slowly the eerie light rises, imperceptibly at first so that they aren’t aware that the faces of the houses have become brighter. Mel notices as the light beams stronger and he thinks that there must be a fire outside of town. But there’s no smoke, no smell of anything unusual, and the light doesn’t flicker or jump, rather it grows brighter, as though someone’s in control, turning a knob and bringing the colour up stronger and stronger until the television antennas pushing up among the trees shine with light, taking it on full strength so that their arms appear to be neon tubes, vibrating hot-pink. Mel and Jill walk past the Alliance Gospel Church, the United Church, the row of houses on either side of
them bathed in pink light, and then they see flower-beds emerge from front lawns, a tricycle sitting on a sidewalk. People inside the houses abandon the images shifting erratically across television screens, turn off their sets, and come to the window or step outside to look heavenward, at first mildly puzzled, and then, as the sky turns red, they reach for their telephone or books of prayer.

The brick face of the school radiates as though lit from within with burning embers, while its tracery windows above the entrance appear to be solid, a sheet of glowing metal. Margaret watches for Jill and Mel from the veranda and beckons for them to hurry.

“Come inside,” she urges. “This is just too strange.”

“I think it’s aurora borealis,” Mel says as he closes the gate behind them.

“All right, yes.” But Margaret doesn’t like them having been touched by it.

It is not yet daylight when Margaret opens her eyes and hears the rhythmic squeal and groan of the swing. She feels Timothy’s presence in the room and there’s the clink of coins and keys on the bureau as he empties his pockets. When Timothy returns from his travels they seem almost reluctant to cross the space that has opened up between them while he was away. They find that they walk around one another for a time before they can slip back into each other. They have discovered the giving up of that space is accomplished quicker and more gracefully in bed. Margaret listens to the sound of his clothing dropping to the floor. The mattress dips beneath his weight.

“Tim?”

“Amy,” he half whispers. “The little beggar was sitting on the stairs when I came up. Waiting. Now she’s out there in her nightgown.”

“Oh great! She’ll wake the entire neighbourhood.”

Timothy slides in beside her and moves up against her and his cool limbs draw her from her state of half-sleep. She shivers as he curls about her and cups her breast. “Drove all night,” he whispers and then sighs with weariness. Gradually his body grows limp and his breathing slower and Margaret wants to try to sleep again, to drift inside his encircling arms. His limbs begin to warm from the heat of her body. His fingers twitch in muscle spasms against her breast. She closes her eyes and falls into the rhythm of his breathing pattern so as not to disturb his drift into sleep, but her heart thuds too loudly against the mattress and she grows tense with the sound of it. She opens her eyes and sees the arrangement of wicker furniture, a vague grey outline in the first light of sun, and she thinks: Fool. Cosy, she’d thought when she’d put the furniture there. The chair backs face one another across the low table, an almost grim arrangement, she thinks now. Her heartbeat quickens and she winces against an image of Bill North that keeps rising unbidden behind her eyes. Fool! She wants to pound the word flat against the bed. Timothy’s hand clutches at her breast.