Skinnybones and the Wrinkle Queen Read online

  As I’m peeling off the plastic straw, Brad Silverstone brings in Ethan. He looks like he’s at least forty-five. Everybody’s jaws drop.

  “Never too old to pursue a dream,” he giggles.

  Not only old, but he has bad teeth.

  Brad points to some metal chairs over by a bunch of gym risers set end to end to make a kind of runway.

  “Can I get everyone over here?”

  A couple of middle-aged women have straggled in from the staff room to join him.

  Brad introduces them.

  Ava, with bleached blonde hair in a mountain of Dolly Parton curls and a load of make-up that reflects the light from the overhead fluorescents, will be doing sessions, we are told, on skin and nail care, make-up artistry, hair styling and color analysis. She has a little, high-pitched voice, and it seems like she has to stop and draw a breath two or three times a sentence.

  All of us are trying not to look at one another, but the red-headed girl named Mason must have caught someone’s eye, because she’s giggling and trying to cover it up.

  Waltraud, the other instructor, glares at Mason. She’s a thin, stringy brunette in ballet workout clothes.

  “In my classes you will improve your poise and movement. You will learn how to exercise and what to eat. Dressing and runway technique. It takes work to be a model, and you will work, and not be laughing so much. If you think it’s a joke, you will be thinking again.”

  Mason has quit giggling.

  Now Jude Law Brad takes over. He’s in a T-shirt and blue jeans so tight it’s hard to imagine how he got into them without doing damage to body parts.

  “Photography. Creating videos. Fashion shoots,” he says. “I’m the man with the camera. Believe me, when this week is finished, you’re going to have an amazing portfolio to take with you. And we’ll do individual videos, too — ones you wouldn’t be ashamed to screen in L.A.”

  He likes to talk, Brad, and he has a way of making people feel comfortable. Our first class of the day is with him.

  “I want you to feel totally at ease in front of the camera, so choose one or two things to wear from the racks — maybe something amusing — and just have some fun. We have a few props over in the corner of the room.”

  There’s a big folding screen, a kind of long, padded sofa, one of those giant exercise balls and a wicker chair like the one Ricardo has in his courtyard.

  The racks are filled with all kinds of clothing — some vintage, some that looks like costumes from a theater — and there are boxes of hats and shoes. I’m still feeling damp so I take a jacket and vest from a man’s pin-striped suit, a dress shirt and a funky tie with colored triangles on it, along with a pair of baggy jeans. One of the smaller rooms off the main hall is a dressing room for the girls, and I quickly change out of my wet clothes.

  Brad is shooting pictures of Madison when I come out. She looks like a movie star. Actually she looks like quite a few movie stars, in a dress not too different from the ones the Wrinkle Queen took to Seattle. Brad is loving taking pictures of her on the peacock chair and the sofa. In some, he has her hold a cocktail glass with a bit of juice in it.

  When it’s my turn, he says, “The return of Annie Hall! Not bad, but let’s find you a bowler hat, and let’s loosen the necktie, make that collar as rumpled and interesting as possible.”

  It seems like he takes a hundred pictures of me lying on the floor or the sofa, or draped over the big purple ball, or dancing with a hat rack.

  We spend the rest of the morning with Ava, as she does make-up demonstrations on one of the girls, Lesley, and a boy with bad skin, Tyler. The sunless tanning cream she uses on Tyler, though, turns his whole face orange.

  “The problem with sunless creams,” she squeaks and draws in a deep breath, “is that skins react with different degrees (another breath) of sensitivity.”

  Desperately, Ava squishes some dark coloring into his hair to try to make his skin look lighter.

  Mason is having a small fit of giggles that is catching on and rippling through the class. Tyler is starting to look like a pumpkin whose top leaves have been blackened by a killer frost.

  Even though most of the students are grabbing lunch at a sushi restaurant on Davie, I decide I’d better make a quick trip back to the hotel to check on the Wrinkle Queen.

  She’s managed to get up and get dressed and is in the wingback chair, smoking and watching TV.

  “You should have been here a few minutes earlier,” she says. “You would have seen yourself on television.”

  28

  Watching TV news is something I’ve done very little of in the last few years — even less at the Triple S ranch where the televisions in the common room and the lounge are as old and tired as most of the people watching them. When they actually work, they’re tuned to Wheel of Fortune or reruns of the Mary Tyler Moore Show.

  I’ve always preferred a good book. Among the items Skinnybones and I failed to pack, though, was anything to read. When I went down to the cafe for breakfast, I noticed a couple of shelves of reading material in a nook in the lobby, but most of it was ancient Reader’s Digest condensed books, which I refuse to read, and some copies of Doubleday Club selections from the 1940s. I didn’t read Frank Yerby and Frances Parkinson Keyes then and I don’t plan to begin now. Luckily there was also a copy of Henry James’ Portrait of a Lady.

  But a couple of chapters of that was enough to make me turn on the TV in the suite. Some dreadful morning show with a woman, face frozen into a smile, big capped teeth, interviewing a movie actress who is in Vancouver making a film. A horror movie, from the sound of it.

  “Hollywood North!” the interviewer laughs through her teeth. “Watch out for the gore in Gastown!”

  After commercials, the station brings on the noon news. I’m about to click it off when the screen is filled with a face.

  It’s a school picture of Skinnybones — her hair in some crazy lopsided hairdo that looks like it’s being held in place with butterfly paper clips — smiling what she believes to be her killer model smile.

  “Have you seen this teenager?” a voice is saying. “Police are uncertain when fifteen-year-old Tammy Schlotter, who also goes by the name Tamara Tierney, and an elderly woman to whom she was a companion...” Now my picture comes up. It’s thirteen years old — the one I have on the piano in the house. “...eighty-nine-year-old Jean Barclay disappeared from Barclay’s Glenora home.

  “At this point, police are uncertain if there is foul play involved. The disappearance of Barclay’s vehicle, a 1997 red Buick, from her garage is another piece in the puzzle of the missing teen and senior. Anyone with any information is asked to call the RCMP at...”

  “Maybe you’d better phone the Shadbolts,” I tell Tamara when she comes back at lunchtime.

  “No,” she says, flinging off the crumpled clothes she’s wearing, pulling on a shirt and the costume-jewelry jeans from the closet. “Have you had lunch?”

  “Late breakfast. I’m not hungry. Maybe if you call and explain...”

  “You think they’d let me stay here and finish the course?” Suddenly she’s laughing and then swearing under her breath. “I wasn’t born yesterday.”

  “Close,” I remind her.

  “You should be worrying. What do you think they’re going to do to you?”

  “You know, dear, I really don’t care.”

  Now she’s looking at me with fire in her eyes.

  “Of course you don’t care. You got to go to all your stupid operas. I’ve only started my course. It’s not fair.”

  “Whoever told you life was going to be fair?”

  “Oh, can it.”

  She’s pacing around the room, muttering.

  “I’ll call Shirl and Herb tonight,” she says, “just to say we’re okay, but I’m not going to tell them where we are.”

  When she comes back from afternoon classes, she decides to make the call before we go out to eat.

  “Hi, it’s me,” I hear her sa
y. “I’m fine. Remember, I said Miss Barclay wanted me to drive her to visit...yes, well, guess what?...her nephew lives in Jasper and he wanted us to stay with him for a couple of days...No, he’s not here right now. He’s taken her out for supper. I didn’t feel like going...Call you when they get back?...Sure, if I’m still awake...His name? Magwitch. Phillip Magwitch...Bye, now...My show’s coming on...Bye...”

  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.

  29

  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 vo
ice, 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.

  30

  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...”