Authors: David Anderson
There was only one way to find out for sure.
We moved it across to the nearest point to the warehouse roof and heaved it into position. The far end clattered down noisily, but stayed in place.
She gave me a nudge and I knew I had to take the lead.
“Hold it steady,” I said.
She did and in the end it wasn’t difficult. On the others side we found our way onto the flat of the roof and began exploring. I checked the door and noted the gaps between it and the frame. The domed skylight occupied most of our attention and we gave it a thorough examination with flashlights.
When we were done we retraced our way back without any problems.
In her room that night I made up a list of the equipment we’d need.
*
We decided we’d do it the following Tuesday night. The Friday before is when the ‘Strange Incident’ happened. That’s how I think of it. Before the heist I dismissed it as unimportant. Afterwards? Well, judge for yourself.
“We have one more thing to do,” she said, when we met in the Students’ Union bar at six p.m. after lectures.
“What’s that?” I wondered, thinking it would be some sort of ‘recce’ thing.
“I want you to meet someone.”
“Who?”
“Someone I have considerable faith in. She’s a clairvoyant.”
I almost dropped my beer glass. Emma hadn’t shown the slightest sign of believing in such things before now.
She raised a defensive hand in response to my evident astonishment. “Don’t laugh. Maria will prove you wrong. I have absolute confidence in her. OK?”
I scanned her face, her very beautiful, sincere face, and knew that she was being totally serious. I also knew that I had to play along. “I’m not laughing, Emma. I’ve been known to walk around a ladder or two myself,” I lied, “I just didn’t realise you were the same.”
Emma seemed reassured. “It’s just that Maria’s predictions . . . advice, whatever you want to call them, have been uncannily accurate in the past. So much so that I consult her on important things. With something like this . . . well, she’s a must.”
I nodded sagely. “Are her séances expensive?”
“It’s a reading, not a séance,” Emma replied, “And there’s no specific charge. Normally I give her a hundred.”
“A hundred bucks?” I was astonished at the usually parsimonious Emma’s generosity, especially for a ‘service’ I considered worthless. “Can you afford that?”
“Well, fifty each should do it, Mike.”
I groaned inwardly. “Do we have to?”
She looked serious. “Absolutely, Mike. I can’t do Tuesday night otherwise.”
So off we went, took the Skytrain all the way out to Metrotown. As the train rattled along I watched our reflections side by side in the window and decided we were two naive idiots. No doubt ‘Madame Maria’ would utter some vague mumbo-jumbo and expect our awe-stricken, gullible gratitude. Well, she might get it from Emma but not from me. I’d endure it, nothing more.
We wove our way through crowded streets until we arrived at Maria’s abode, a swanky apartment on the sixth floor of a new high-rise building. In the elevator I reflected on how much money there must be in her game. At the end of the carpeted corridor her door stood out from the rest because of its zodiac decorations. I marched up to it and gave it a few hearty bangs.
Emma grabbed my arm before I could deliver any more blows. “Maria, its Emma. I’ve brought a friend.”
Just a friend, eh? My hackles were sky high by now. The door opened a crack, a beady eye peered out, the door closed again, and the chain came off. She’s supposed to be psychic, I thought, shouldn’t she know who’s at her door?
The door opened wide, revealing a Gypsy Rose figure. Maria was about seventy years old, short and slim, with plenty of wrinkles in a face surrounded by suspiciously black curly hair tumbling down on to her shoulders. There was a gleam in the small, coal-black eyes. Long earrings dangled and shone, and her fingers were covered in a variety of fancy rings. A patterned shawl covered her shoulders, framing a low neckline that revealed far too much breast for a woman of her age. I had zero difficulty looking elsewhere.
She stared long and hard at me, like a snake oil salesman weighing up a prospective customer. “Take off the sunglasses,” she said.
I’d been wearing them as protection against the setting sun and hadn’t thought to take them off on the way up. I did so now and she stepped closer.
“Give me a look at your eyes,” she said.
I leaned over and obliged. She peered up at me, moved her head from side to side, and tut-tutted with her tongue.
“I see a troubled soul,” she said.
As if my eyes really were windows to my soul. “Nice one,” I thought.
At last she’d seen enough. “If it’s a reading you’re after, I’m not sure I’m up to it tonight. The spirits don’t come at my beck and call, you know. Still, I can only do my best.”
At that she stepped back and waved us in. She drew heavy drapes across the windows until the room was in darkness, then lit a squat, aromatic candle which she placed at the side of a small, round table. I was disappointed that there was no crystal ball in the middle of it. I wanted the full works for my fifty bucks. We sat around the table, our knees virtually touching.
Madame Maria, as I now thought of her, swayed her head back and forth, which presumably helped, and then we joined hands. As her bony claw grasped my hand under the table, she leaned forward and I caught a whiff of whiskey on her breath.
Emma gave me an encouraging smile. “Maria, can you do Mike first, please?”
Without answering, Maria broke hands and fished an ancient dog-eared pack of Tarot cards from the folds of her dress.
“I’m not feeling the spirits tonight, but I’ll try.”
So, according to Emma this wasn’t a séance, eh? She could have fooled me. Reluctant spirits were a handy excuse for her to hedge her bets.
Maria spread the cards out on the table in a well-practised motion. She gathered them up again, cut the pack, and laid the top four cards down in a criss-cross pattern.
“Each one tells a tale,” she muttered. There was a long silence as she seemed to ponder their significance, then she raised her gaze and looked at me.
“You must shun a dark-haired woman,” she said, “She is a bad omen.”
I’d sat up late the previous night, had a long day today, and before I could stop myself my face creased up and I let out a massive yawn. I felt a sharp kick under the table from Emma’s side.
“Maria,” Emma said quickly, “Mike and I are going to do something a bit dangerous soon. Will it be safe or not?”
Madame Maria seized on the hint at once. She stared at the cards, then back at me. “I see a tall building.”
My heart stopped.
“It’s brightly lit. A holy place, I think. A dark place stands next to it. You must not go there. You are not welcome.”
By now I was in a cold sweat. Emma seemed to be calmer. “But are we going to be lucky there Maria?” she persisted.
Madame Maria turned towards Emma. “Yes, you are going to be very lucky. You will meet with much favour there.”
“Tell us more about the dark building,” Emma almost shouted.
Madame Maria grimaced in disapproval. But she reshuffled the cards and dealt a further two. “These are your specific cards, Emma. Your spirit has control over this dark place. You can do as you please there. I see only bright fortune for you.” Her voice was emphatic. “Now I am getting tired and the spirits are departing me. I must stop.”
She gathered up the cards and it was over. At the door she stuffed our two fifty dollar bills into her small, wizened bosom and gave us a palm-outwards blessing.
Out on the street, Emma faced me. “What did you think of that?”
By now I’d got my composure back and was sorely tempted to say that I thought the whole thing was ambiguous, well-practised guesswork. But I knew what would happen if I did. “Odd how she hit on the dark building, and the Church next to it,” I observed neutrally, “Did you say something about that when you called her?”
“No, I didn’t. She’s pretty good, eh?” Emma spoke in an awed, reverent tone.
I still wasn’t convinced, but kept quiet. By the time we got home I’d pushed the entire evening to the back of my mind as a silly, expensive, waste of time. The sort of thing you sometimes have to do to keep a girlfriend happy.
The following night I went downtown and took another look at our target. There was a service on at the church and the long stained-glass windows were brightly lit, the intricate scaffolding clad against one side like a collapsed spider’s web. The lights made the warehouse next door look all the darker, a black maw waiting to swallow up the unwary.
I shivered and wondered about Madame Maria, and if there really was such a thing as a gypsy curse.
*
Tuesday came. From the window of Emma’s tenth floor student apartment I watched the red sun set. Street lights came on block by block across the university campus. I sipped plain water from the tap while Emma checked and double checked the equipment.
I kept going over in my mind what we were about to do, until I was so nervous that bile rose up in my gut and I had to run to the bathroom to retch. She didn’t say a word about it, just took my empty glass and filled it with some more water.
When it got completely dark we grabbed our backpacks, hurried down the stairs, and slipped out the rear door of the building.
And that’s how I made the biggest mistake of my life.
MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS
Present
day
I swallowed hard, fought the anger and confusion down.
“Hi,” I mumbled feebly.
“Can we talk?” she asked. When I didn’t reply she added, “Please?” The tone seemed sincere but was impossible to interpret further. Unlike my strangulated responses, I’m sure.
“OK.” I was barely able to form the word.
She turned and we weaved our way through mostly empty tables, down past the long
faux
oak counter to a quiet area at the far end, where there were couches, a low table, and some kind of African tribal art on the walls. Fortunately it was a slow time for customers and no-one else was sitting there. She took one end of a small sofa and I sat at the other. I cleared my throat but couldn’t think of anything to say. She turned to me and smiled.
“Would you like another coffee?”
How did she know that I’d just finished one? Had she been watching us?
“Sure,” I mumbled, “One cream, no sugar.”
“I know.” She smiled again and got up.
I watched as she got two fresh coffees, wondering if she still took hers black with no sugar. She’d changed a lot since I’d known her. Back in our university days she’d worn her hair short, like a tomboy. She’d dressed simply then, often buying her clothes from thrift shops. Now her hair was long, swept back from her forehead and falling down around her face in golden tresses. The old, second-hand leather pants she’d worn on Friday nights at the Students’ Union bar – her party pants as she’d called them – had given way to more sophisticated clothing that I guessed had designer labels. She moved and spoke with a confidence that proclaimed class and money. It was another reason not to like her.
She turned towards me with the coffees and I looked away, glancing down at the handbag she’d left on the floor. It looked expensive. Her sunglasses, folded and sitting on top of the open bag, had the little word
Bulgari
on the left leg.
She’d come a long way in the last decade. Again, unlike me.
“Here you are,” she said, setting the steaming mug on the low table in front of me.
“Thanks.” This conversation was going to be difficult.
For long, uncomfortable seconds we sat in silence, stealing glances at each other between sips of our drinks. It was good coffee, strong but smooth, just the way I liked it. I knocked it back quickly until there was hardly any left, then slowed right down, dreading having to put an empty mug on the table and be the first to speak. At last she put her cup down, ran her finger around the rim, and gave me a cautious look.
“You’re still angry,” she said.
“Yes,” I replied. I had to look away as I said it.
“You have every right to be,” she replied.
“Yes I do, don’t I?” My voice rose as anger surged through me again.
She didn’t answer and there was another silence. I finally looked straight at her. Ten years of pain surged up in the emotional pressure cooker inside me. I had one burning question pulsating through my mind, but my lips asked her something else entirely.
“What do you want?” I blurted out.
She looked surprised at the question, or at least the tone of it. “I don’t want anything”
“That’s hard to believe.”
“We met by accident just now.”
“You’re lying,” I replied. The big question still loomed and I could no longer hold back from asking it. “But now you’re here, answer this. Tell me why.”
She looked genuinely puzzled. “Why what?”
There; she’d said it, as I knew she would. In the maelstrom of emotions swirling around in me, the predominant one was still pent up anger. And now she dared to ask me
Why
what
? She’d lit the blue touch paper. Now she’d better stand back.
“What do you think?” My chest felt tight as a drum and I had trouble breathing. In the end, the words rushed out in a volcanic torrent. “Why’d you do that to me? Why’d you ruin everything we had?”
*
There was a tense silence. She sat perfectly still, looking down at her coffee. I’d shouted out the questions without realising it and several customers stared at me over their lattes. I stared right back and they looked away.
“I’ve wanted to tell you that for a long time,” she finally said.
“Then why didn’t you?”
She shrugged. “It’s a long story.”
“I’m listening.”
“OK, but give me a chance, right? Here’s what happened . . .”
And then she told me a long, breathless story about hearing sounds of footsteps on the roof while she was waiting for me, of turning and seeing a dark figure approaching her. A security guard? She didn’t say and I wouldn’t have believed her if she’d claimed it was one. She insisted that this mysterious stranger was ominous, threatening. Well, on that roof, that night, he sure would have been, just by his presence alone. That’s supposing he ever existed.
She said she panicked and ran away and didn’t look back, hoping I’d make it out safely and be right behind her. How I was supposed to do that she didn’t specify. She claimed that she almost dislodged the plank as she ran across it and I imagined how that must have scared her; then she said she’d almost fallen down the scaffolding, and almost got caught running out the back of the church courtyard. Too many ‘almosts’ for me to believe.
“And this started the instant after I gave you the two backpacks?” I asked her when she was finally done.
“I’d heard the sounds – footsteps or whatever they were – before that, but then the figure appeared after you handed the packs up to me.”
“What about the stuff?”
Her forehead creased; puzzled.
“The two backpacks.”
“I left them right there. Believe me, they were the last thing on my mind.”
I didn’t believe a word of it. The fact was she hadn’t given me a single good reason to believe a word of it. I still had plenty of unanswered questions. My impulse was to fire them at her and I opened my mouth to begin the barrage.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” she pre-empted.
Something in her sad expression made me pause and shrug. Despite myself, I took my time and turned her story over in my mind. In the end I had to admit that it was just possible. Someone
might
have spotted us climbing up the scaffolding and followed, then found the plank and crossed it to see what we were up to. Anyone who did that on the spur of the moment would have to be a tough nut indeed. A tough, scary
hombre
with an eye for the main chance. If such a person existed, seeing him on the roof would have scared me too.
Yes, it was possible. Not very likely, but vaguely possible.
“He saw the backpacks, Michael. He’d have done whatever it took to get them off me, I’m sure of it. I think he had a weapon too.”
I was still sceptical. If there was a person . . .
if
,
if
,
if
. . . then, yes, she was right to make a run for it. We’d agreed beforehand that if we encountered anybody up there, we’d immediately turn tail and make a run for it. We didn’t intend committing any violence and we didn’t intend getting arrested either. That meant: RUN if discovered. If what she was saying was true – a very big
if
– then she’d done just that.
“Do you believe me?” she asked.
I stalled for a minute, picked up my mug, swirled the remaining coffee around in it and took a sip of the tepid, gritty dregs, just to give me time to think.
“Maybe,” I replied. Even if she’d just had a panic attack and imagined it all, this was still better than what I’d believed for the last ten years. Hell, even if she’d made it all up it was better than the not knowing I’d had up until now. And at least I now had evidence of some remorse.
I was still wary though. She’d sown a seed of doubt in my mind and made me question my own judgement. What she’d said could be the truth, some version of truth anyway, or it could be a manipulative story. I put down the mug and looked hard at her. Maybe that was a mistake. But unless she’d become an accomplished actress in the interim, I was pretty sure that the anguished expression on her face was genuine.
As I examined her features, the changes and sophistications of the intervening years fell away and I saw the twenty-year-old I’d once known. The scatty, amusing, imperfect and incredibly exciting girl I’d dated a decade ago. To my great surprise, I was beginning to feel a renewed yearning for those years and for that girl. I frowned in annoyance at myself and looked away from her. Over the last ten years I’d rehearsed this meeting a million times in my head and this wasn’t how it was supposed to go.
I struggled to clear my emotions off the table, forcing myself back to being cold and businesslike. “That doesn’t explain the vanishing act afterwards,” I said.
She knew exactly what I was talking about. “I know.”
“You left me in the lurch.”
Her hand went up to her face, pushed back a strand of hair. “I’ve always felt guilty about that, Michael.”
“Then why’d you do it? Why’d you just disappear afterwards? I searched the whole of UBC but could never find you.”
“Did you really try that much?”
“Of course I did. I even went to the Registrar’s Office. They wouldn’t tell me a thing. Nearly threw me out when I lost my temper.” I still remembered the argument I’d had with the shrew of a woman behind the counter, and the swearwords I’d heaped on her blue-rinsed head. It hadn’t been my finest moment.
“I had to go back to Victoria. My dad was ill, terminal in fact. Mum needed me. In the end it was a long drawn out thing. After he died I finished my degree over there.”
“And you couldn’t have called, or written a letter?”
“I was scared what you’d think of me running out on you.”
“You could have tried.”
“I know, I wasn’t thinking straight. What with dad and all . . .”
Maybe she was pulling on my heartstrings; then again, this was plausible. I vaguely recalled her once saying something about aged parents who’d had her late in life, and about her father having a cancer scare. Her scenario was just about believable.
“Didn’t you care at all about me?”
She reached out and put her hand on top of mine. “I did, Michael, I did. I always wondered. I went over that night in my mind a million times. I had nightmares about it, always ending with you stuck down there and the alarm going off. That man must have triggered it, I don’t know how or why.”
I wanted to believe her. “It took me a long time to get over it,” I said.
Her fingers stroked the back of my hand. “That was the worst part of it. Not knowing how you coped, if you were doing all right, or how long you had to endure it.”
This was a bit too cryptic. “Endure what?”
“Well, with you being stuck down there and all . . . I mean . . . I always wondered.”
“Wondered what?”
She hesitated. “Well . . . however long it was, it must have been hell for you. That’s the one thing that tormented me. Not knowing where they’d taken you or how much time you were serving.”
It must have been the tension needing a release. I felt something surprising and unexpected well up inside me and I had to let it out. I burst out laughing.