Skinnybones and the Wrinkle Queen Read online

  “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.”

  She begins brushing on the Midnight Cherry goop.

  “You couldn’t have picked better weather,” she says. “Just ideal for the beach except for that little bit of rain we had yesterday morning and we needed that to refresh the flowers and grass. I always say let it rain a little bit in the morning and get it out of the way for the rest of the day. You been spending time at the beach?”

  “I was planning to,” I tell her, “but I misplaced my surfboard.”

  When she’s finished, though, I like what she’s done, working a couple of subtle curls into the upsweep. And it is a rich shade of black. A beautician gives me a facial and then reapplies my make-up.

  “All ready for a big date?” she says with hardly a trace of condescension.

  “Something like that.”

  “You want me to telephone for a cab?”

  “No,” I say, “I’m just going next door to the hotel.”

  She helps me get my walker out to the street. I’ve never been more ready for a brandy and a smoke, and the bar sign in the window of the hotel is a friendly beacon. There’s a wheelchair ramp so I don’t need to negotiate stairs.

  I’m almost to the door when it happens. The wheel on the walker catches against a ridge on a planter and, struggling to keep my balance, I go plummeting into a mass of castor beans in full bloom. Before the pain sweeps over me, I see those big blossoms waving like red flags above me.

  My color, I think, and then everything goes black.

  31

  I’ve never seen her so angry. While Christophe takes the Wrinkle Queen down to the cab, I head for the bathroom. My eyes are red and the skin around them is puffy. Washing my face in ice cold water helps, and then I do my make-up.

  “We have time to grab some sushi on the way back to class,” Christophe says when he returns.

  He has elegant hands, Christophe. Elegant the way he holds a California roll. Elegant, I’ve noticed, with his thumb tucked into the front pocket of his jeans, or his fingers smoothing the lapels of a suit jacket.

  “What if the car is just driven a ways and abandoned?” he says, his hands cupping a small bowl of green tea.

  “I can’t think about it,” I say. And it’s true. Everything has become too complicated. “Do you remember what we have first this afternoon?”

  “More runway routines with Drill Sergeant Waltraud. Then, if the weather stays nice, we’re doing an outside shoot with Brad down at the beach. Wait till you see me in a bathing suit.” He wiggles his eyebrows at me.

  The runway routines take about an hour.

  “Concentrate,” Waltraud snaps at me. “You’re out of sync with the rest.”

  I try, but it’s not easy. Too many things have been happening.

  Has there been anything in the newspaper, I wonder.

  For the beach shoot, a sportswear shop has given us clothes left over from last year’s line. I find a red sun dress that works with the sandals I’m wearing. The Wrinkle Queen would like this one.

  As we trek down to the beach parks along English Bay, it feels like the field trips we used to take in elementary school. Ethan is cracking people up by walking funny, goose-stepping, power jogging. It’s a brilliantly sunny afternoon, and, with Christophe beside me, it’s possible to forget everything that’s been happening. At least for a few minutes.

  But when Brad is taking some shots of me in a gazebo, I hear a loud booming sound coming across the water. Probably from construction work going on somewhere, but it makes me think of the cannon fire Pip hears at the beginning of Great Expectations — the convict ship’s signal that prisoners have escaped.

  Can they put the Wrinkle Queen and me in prison? The thought of her in jail is kind of funny. Heaven hel
p the warden and the guards.

  “That’s it,” Brad says. “A nice natural smile. Now lean your elbows against the railing.”

  They have special jails for kids. Young offenders centers. Do they have special jails for old people? Senior detention centers?

  Maybe that’s what places like the Sierra Sunset Seniors’ Lodge really are.

  Christophe is posing on some rocks. He’s wearing baggy shorts slung low on his torso. I can tell he works out.

  “Do you think she’ll be okay?” he asks on the way back to the church. “Getting to the hotel from the beauty parlor on her own?”

  “Sure. She said something about going to a lounge after. If she’s not at the hotel when I get back, I’ll go over to Burrard Street and look for —”

  Christophe suddenly grabs my arm. “I think maybe there’s someone waiting for you at the church.”

  In the driveway by the front entrance there’s an RCMP cruiser and a mountie leaning against it, watching all of us straggling back from the beach.

  My first impulse is to run, but then I think, if the police have tracked me this far, there’s really no point. It’s all over. I don’t plan to go out of my way, though, and lie down at the mountie’s feet. As we go in, he eyes each of us, and then he’s talking to Brad.

  When I come out of the change room, Christophe is writing something on a scrap of paper.

  “Here’s my aunt’s number here in Vancouver. Below that’s my number and address in Kamloops.” His fingers don’t leave when he presses it into my hand.

  “Tamara.” It’s Brad waving me over to the staff room.

  The mountie is there.

  “This is Sergeant Gibbs,” Brad says. “He’d like to talk to you.”

  “Tammy Schlotter?” He’s checking something on a notepad.

  “Tamara,” I say.

  “You’ve been leading everyone on quite a merry little chase, haven’t you?”

  “Pardon?”

  “We’ve checked the hotel where Miss Jean Barclay’s registered, but there’s no one there.”

  “She’s out,” I say. “Getting her hair done.”

  “Well, we need to first of all get together for a little talk with you both and find out just what in tarnation’s been going on. And, second of all, get you pointed back in the direction of Edmonton, where there’s a few people waiting for you — all of them just a bit hot under the collar.” There’s sweat on his forehead, and he mops it with a big handkerchief.

  I don’t say anything. And I don’t look anyone in the eye. Not Brad. Not the mountie.

  “Best get your things and we’ll take a little drive over to that hairdressing place.”

  Christophe asks the mountie if he can come, too, but the mountie says, “No, this isn’t no joy ride.”

  I sit in the back seat. Sergeant Gibbs has a little roll of flesh that bulges along the back of his neck, above his collar. I feel like reaching out and giving it a good pinch.

  “This where you said? Aloe Vera?”

  When he asks, they tell him Miss Barclay was finished over an hour ago. Said she was heading over to a hotel. We go to the hotel next door and check the lounge, but the Wrinkle Queen’s not there.

  As we’re leaving, the doorman says an old lady in a red dress had a fall. Paramedics rushed her down the street to St. Paul’s.

  Miss Barclay’s there. In Emergency. But barely conscious. A nurse stands by while the mountie talks to her.

  Is she going to die? In that skinny hospital bed that looks like a trolley, she looks so small, like there’s hardly anything holding her together.

  “Don’t die,” I whisper. I feel tight inside, and dizzy.

  “Miss Barclay?” The mountie’s surprisingly gentle as he takes hold of her hand.

  “Uh?” Her eyes don’t seem to focus. Her face is all done up with fresh make-up and her hairdo, although it’s lopsided, is blacker than ever against the white pillow. There are some bits of plant caught in it.

  “We’re going to have to get Tamara home,” he says. “The nurse says you’re going to have to stay in the hospital for a few days at the very least...”

  “Tamara?”

  “I’m here,” I say.

  “We’ll check you out of the hotel,” Sergeant Gibbs tells her. “You’ll be well looked after here. And Tamara is going home.”

  I touch her hand the way I did when she was sleeping and I needed to wake her up.

  “Miss Barclay,” I say. “We almost did it.”

  She closes her eyes.

  “Is she going to be okay?” I ask the nurse.

  “The doctor says she wrecked the knee that had been reconstructed. He’s going to have to do revision surgery.”

  At the hotel, I pack a bag for the hospital. Just her toiletries and her nightgown and robe and a couple of day outfits. Sergeant Gibbs watches as I repack her gowns in tissue paper and then get my things together.

  “What’s going to happen to me?” I ask him.

  “Social services will be dealing with you.” He gives me a look, probably the same one he uses on dope peddlers and murderers.

  “And what about Miss Barclay’s car?”

  “Her car?”

  “It was stolen this morning.”

  “Did you file a report?”

  When he finds out we didn’t, he swears under his breath. Then he’s using the phone, calling the airline, booking a later flight.

  By the time we get to the airport, after taking Miss Barclay’s bag to the hospital and stopping at the police station to report the car theft, Sergeant Gibbs is so mad his face has turned a blotchy red.

  “Is it okay if I make a phone call?” I ask him.

  “Who to?” he snaps.

  “Just Christophe. My friend from the course.”

  “You’ve only got a few minutes before boarding.”

  “That’s all I need.”

  At a pay phone, with Gibbs standing close enough that he can probably listen in if he wants to, I call the Vancouver number that Christophe has written down on the scrap paper.

  “She fell in a planter and broke her knee all over again,” I tell him.

  “Oh, God.”

  “But in a way I’m glad...I mean not glad that she broke her knee. But glad, in a way, it’s over.”

  “The course?”

  “Yeah. If it hadn’t happened today, it probably would have tomorrow. I don’t know if you can get to be a model in five days anyway.”

  “You can be a model,” Christophe says. “You’re beautiful. I just wish you were older than fifteen.”

  “My birthday’s in September,” I say. “I’ll call you after September seventh and I’ll be sixteen.”

  “I could call you.”

  “You could if you knew where I’ll be,” I say.

  32

  “It’s healing nicely,” the doctor says. “You should be able to fly home in a couple of weeks.” He’s a tall man with a shock of white hair. Or is it just blond? Who knows with men coloring and streaking their hair these days? He doesn’t look old enough to have spent seven years at medical school.

  “You’re getting in and out of the wheelchair okay?”

  “I could use a shot of Demerol before and after,” I tell him.

  “Now, now.” He laughs softly. “We don’t want to turn you into a drug addict.”

  What I could really use, I think, is a mickey of brandy and some cigarillos. One of the orderlies has been bringing me cigarettes but he refuses to go to the liquor store. He’s good about wheeling me down to the sidewalk for a smoke during his break.

  Hernando.

  “Very bad for your health,” he tells me at least once a trip.

  I’m expecting him this afternoon, but the man standing at the door is a mountie. The same one who came a couple of days ago and asked me questions about the car.

  “Any news of the Buick?” I ask him.

  “They found it half way to Langley. Pretty well trashed,” he says. “A write-of
f.”

  “I guess no more can be expected in a city of criminals.”

  “You got that right.” He looks at me knowingly.

  “Do you mind?” I gesture toward the wheelchair. I can sense his strength as he helps me off the bed and into it — strong arms of the law.

  “Do you have time to wheel me down to the parking lot? We get to smoke out there. Mixes nicely with the car fumes.”

  He pulls out a package of Nicorette gum and pops one into his mouth as I light my cigarette.

  “That was pretty...ill-considered,” he says. “Taking a minor into the States, letting her drive your vehicle, lying to her guardians. If it were up to me, I’d have you charged. You were a schoolteacher, weren’t you? What kind of woman...”

  He’s getting red in the face. I think he would like to see me behind bars.

  “Is she back home?”

  “Signed, sealed and delivered,” he says, moving the wheelchair to a spot of shade.

  “You couldn’t let her finish her modeling course?”

  The traffic of Burrard Street hums alongside us. One of the horde of Vancouver homeless pauses and eyes my cigarette longingly. I flip one up out of the package for him and he shuffles over, self-conscious in front of the mountie, to retrieve it.

  “It was only three more days. What would it have hurt?” I add.

  “I don’t get either of you.” He shakes his head. “And especially you. Deceit. Public mischief...”

  “Our own private mischief.”

  “Watch what you’re saying, lady. It may not be too late...”

  “She had a dream. And it was so close...she was reaching out and touching it. So close.”

  “But it was wrongheaded,” he says, “and you letting her drive...she could have been killed.”

  “We’re all on a life journey and the ending’s the same,” I inform him.

  “Yes, lady. But you’re a hell of a lot closer to the finish line than that little girl is...”

  “Spare me the race car metaphors.”

  I can see him rolling his eyes.

  “You flatfoot.” My voice has gone low and raspy but I think he hears me, no trouble. “What do you know of roads taken — and roads not taken?”