but why?’
‘She became a hippie, one of the first. She didn’t like being married to a square, and I wouldn’t let her smoke pot. It was a big deal then.’
‘But you got lucky the second time.’
‘Yes. It’s not all hearts and flowers but I’m still married.’
‘Is she pretty?’
‘Everybody else says so.’
‘Do you have a good sex life?’
Salter looked around again. ‘I haven’t compared lately,’ he said. ‘But it’s a bloody sight better than I was having at your age.’
She laughed. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Now I have to go.’ She put out her hand in a weirdly formal gesture. ‘Once more, Charlie, I hope you catch him.’
He still had some beer to finish so he stayed in the café and watched her cross the parking lot and walk between the two buildings on her way to Bloor Street.
After dinner, overwhelmed by a desire to be agreeable, he helped his wife with the dishes, taking the opportunity to kiss her on the neck, an area he was fond of.
‘Go away, goat,’ she said. ‘Or I’ll cover you in suds.’
He dropped the dishtowel on her head to blindfold her, undid the button on her slacks and nearly got the zipper down, preparatory to raping her, dramatically, up against the ‘fridge. ‘ “Strange fits of passion I have known,” ‘ he said.
‘Not so strange,’ she said dodging. ‘But you’ll have to wait. Dorothy is coming in from next door to show me how to make a new kind of patchwork square.’
Half an hour later she came upstairs to look for the sewing-basket and found him posing in front of the mirror wearing a jockstrap.
He failed to look embarrassed, so she tried a joke. ‘If you want to try my underwear on, don’t tear it,’ she said.
‘Me Thor,’ he said, in reference to an old love-making joke. ‘For your information, madam, I am going to play squash tomorrow.’
‘In that?’
‘And my old tennis stuff. Do you know where it all is?’
‘What’s this all about?’
‘I’m going to play squash. Get fit again, like you suggested.’
‘Why now? What’s going on?’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, nothing’s going on. I just decided to take up squash, is all.’ He told her the story of Bailey and the club, and his curiosity about Summers’s passion for the game.
‘Well, enjoy yourself. But take it easy.’ She looked at the slight belly. ‘I don’t want to be widowed by a heart attack.’
‘You think I’m too old?’ he asked.
‘Of course not, dear.’ She tried to make up by tweaking his jockstrap, letting it snap back against him. ‘Have a good game,’ she said. ‘But leave something for me.’
‘Ha, ha, ha. Randy bitch.’ Salter turned happily back to the mirror. He felt as if he were on holiday.
CHAPTER 5
He woke smiling from his first good dream in a year. He sat up and grabbed at the memory before it faded. He was in charge of a World Centre. People came to him with their problems. He was the World Centre for All Problems. Telephones rang. ‘World Centre here,’ he would say. ‘Can I help you?’ He solved them all. Salter shook Annie awake, ‘I’m the World Centre,’ he said. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Orange juice,’ she said, pulling her nightdress tight around her knees and turning away.
‘Right,’ he said, and jumped out of bed to fetch it.
He was not looking forward to interviewing Summers’s wife, and he had put if off as long as possible. Now she was the last one, and he had an appointment with her for ten o’clock that morning. Her house was on Stouffville Avenue, in an area known as Deer Park, no more than a mile from his own house, and he decided it would be pointless to travel down to the office first. He considered hanging about the house for another hour, but since this would certainly involve him in tying up newspapers for the weekly pickup, or washing out the garbage cans with disinfectant, or any of the other husbandly duties he did not usually mind, but did not want to be asked to do this morning, he said nothing, and left the house at his usual time, pointed virtuously towards the subway station.
He could go two ways. One way led him through upper-middle-class residential streets, across the park, and past his son’s school—a pleasant, leafy stroll on a fine spring morning. But Salter was a townie; he liked shops and people and a bit of life, so he headed for the local portion of Yonge Street (the longest street in the Commonwealth), and began his stroll by walking beside the morning rush-hour traffic. He bought a paper and a cup of coffee; and sat in the mall at the entrance to the subway, enjoying the sense of playing hookey as the morning crowds poured down the stairs. When he had had his fill, he threw the paper into a bin and crossed Eglinton Avenue to walk south. He particularly liked this bit of the street, with its Chinese greengrocers, delicatessen shops, and the hardware store run by six cheerful Australians (or were they New Zealanders?) He paused at each of the three sporting-goods stores and looked at the windows, pricing the squash racquets, and he wondered again how the seven unisex hairdressers made a living. One more gas station had disappeared to make way for a fast food outlet—that made the third in the last few years. Three more restaurants had opened since he last counted, along with a shop that sold only coffee, another that sold sexy underwear, and two travel agents. Hard times? thought Salter. This town stinks of money.
At Davisville subway he turned along Chaplin Crescent into Oriole Park. Here nothing had changed in ten years. The same young mothers were watching the same babies crawl about the sandpit; the same old people were sitting on the benches; the same air-hostesses and night-workers were lying about the grass, trying to get a start on their summer tans. It was all as it was when Salter used to bring Angus and Seth here to play when Annie managed to nail him for baby-sitting on his day off. And here were the same bloody dog-owners. Salter decided to do his duty. ‘You,’ he called to the swaggering owner of a Doberman pinscher which was bounding about the park, preparatory to savaging one of the children. ‘That your dog? Put it on a leash, and don’t let it wander here again out of control.’ He showed his card. ‘What’s its licence number?’ He made a show of entering the number in his notebook. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Don’t forget.’ Across the park he saw another one, a German Shepherd, a breed he disliked and feared almost as much. He walked over to the owner, a middle-aged woman in a headscarf, standing under the trees, smoking. ‘Get that dog chained up, madam,’ he shouted from far enough away to justify shouting. ‘There are children here and it’s against the law to let your dog run wild.’
‘Go to hell,’ she said. ‘Who are you?’
‘Police Inspector,’ Salter said, showing his card. ‘We’ve had complaints. Get it under control.’
‘He is under control. He wouldn’t hurt a fly, unless I order him.’
The
