anyway—reasonably attractive, and still relatively young. What more could she ask? Happiness? A highly overrated commodity, in her experience.
She reached for the wineglass, but it was empty. She should have brought the bottle.
The mixture of heat and alcohol had made her light-headed and loose-jointed, so when the telephone rang she almost dropped it into the water as she fumbled to answer it.
“Hiya, kid.”
“Hello, Kit,” Victoria replied, instantly recognizing Katherine “Kit” Parsons’ scratchy voice, ravaged by the almost two packs of cigarettes she smoked every day.
“Whatcha up to?”
“Nothing much,” Victoria said. “Taking a bubble bath and getting stewed on white wine. Patrick’s taking the five o’clock ferry to Nanaimo.”
“It’s not healthy to drink alone,” Kit rasped. “Want some company? I haven’t had a bath today.”
Victoria laughed. She was tempted, but said, “I don’t know, Kit. I’m really very tired. I think I’ll just watch a little TV and go to bed early.”
“Have you eaten? I could pick up a pizza or something. A video, too. We’ll just veg out. I’m not going to take no for an answer.”
“Kit, please. Not tonight. I wouldn’t be very good company.”
“All right,” Kit said, voice flat with disappointment. “But call me if you change your mind.”
“Yes, of course,” Victoria said guiltily and pressed the disconnect button.
As soon as she had disconnected she regretted not letting Kit come over. She could have used the company. Reaching out with her foot, she toed the faucet on. Hot water roared into the tub. Despite the rising heat of the bath, the familiar icy emptiness gnawed at her insides and the cold black tendrils of dread that always lurked just beyond the threshold of her awareness slithered into her mind. The flesh of her face grew stiff and numb. The numbness spread, invading her chest. Her heart pounded. She took an unsteady breath, and as she lifted leaden arms to pull herself out of the bath she saw the faint white lines across her wrists and recalled from years earlier the red blossoming into the bath water, frothing pink where the water from the faucet foamed, and her aunt Jane’s screams...
Victoria rinsed off with the hand shower, towelled herself dry, and, wrapped in a thick terry bathrobe, went downstairs to the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator. The dinner Consuela had prepared needed only to be heated in the microwave, but even that seemed like too much trouble. She closed the door and poured more wine into her glass. Her head buzzed and she knew she would have a headache soon.
She keyed Kit’s number into the phone, but stabbed the disconnect button before the call was completed. It would not be a good idea, she knew, considering her mood and the amount of wine she’d drunk, to be alone with Kit tonight. In the four months Victoria had known her, Kit had never made any overt moves, but neither had she hidden her feelings, apparently satisfied to let things develop on their own. Victoria wasn’t at all certain how she felt about the situation. Not that it was a line she hadn’t crossed occasionally before, but she wasn’t sure it was a line she wanted to cross with Kit. Not now, anyway.
The doorbell rang, playing the opening bars of Beethoven’s Für Elise, which she had once loved but now loathed, thanks to that doorbell. Half hoping Kit had decided not to take no for an answer after all, Victoria went to the door.
It was raining again at five-thirty when Shoe nosed the Mercedes up against the door of the garage in the lane behind the peeling, wood-frame house on West 3rd between Balsam and Larch in Kitsilano. Retrieving his purchases from the back seat, he locked the car and pushed his way through the wet, unkempt jungle of the yard to the front of the house to check the mail. Rainwater dripped off the dark green leaves of the huge old magnolia that loomed over the front walk.
January Jack Pine sat on the porch, out of the rain, leaning on a canvas duffle bag, smoking a roll-your-own, and reading a tattered copy of The Portable James Joyce by the yellow light of the coach lamps on either side of the front door. He stood as Shoe climbed the steps. He wore a long Australian stockman’s coat fastened to the chin, but no hat or gloves. Shredding the cigarette, he brushed the remains off his palm into the front yard.
“You still got that spare bed?” he asked as Shoe peered into the empty mailbox. Shoe’s spare bed was a folding cot with a foam rubber mattress that he had used with a sleeping bag when he’d first moved into the house a year and a half ago.
“What’s the problem this time?” Shoe asked as he unlocked the door. Last winter Jack had stayed for a week when the water lines to his houseboat had frozen and burst, but it hadn’t been that cold yet this winter.
“Some damn kid rammed my house with a speedboat,” Jack said. “Put a hole the size o’ yer head in one o’ the pontoons. Damn near capsized, right there at the dock. Bernie Simpson, the salvage guy, he raised her up and patched the pontoon, but it’ll take a while for things t’ dry out.”
Jack lugged his duffle inside, depositing it with a thud at the foot of the stairs. He took off his coat and hung it on the coat tree in the vestibule. Under the coat he wore a red plaid lumberjack shirt over a black denim Levis shirt. His jeans were worn but freshly laundered and his creased boots were polished.
January Jack Pine was a full-blooded Squamish Indian, or so he said. He looked the part, with strong, hawkish features, sharp dark eyes, and thick greying hair worn in two long braids. His grandfather’s father, he claimed, had been born in 1859, the year the English first came to the tidal basin that is now False Creek, in a village by a fish corral on the big sandbar that was to become Granville Island, the former industrial area that had been converted in the seventies by the federal government into a popular shopping, cultural, and tourist centre. Of indeterminate age, between sixty and seventy-five, Jack made a modest living as a poet, painter, and part-time actor. He could have lived on the Squamish reserve on the North Shore, but he didn’t. With the connivance of some of the residents of Sea Village, a community of a dozen or so floating homes moored along the seawall between the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design and the refurbished Granville Island Hotel, Jack had obtained a slip in the marina adjacent to Sea Village where he moored his makeshift houseboat, an old Airstream trailer body mounted on pontoons.
“When you gonna get some furniture?” Jack asked, the worn heels of his boots clicking hollowly on the bare hardwood floors. Since moving into the house, the only major purchases Shoe had made had been a bedroom suite and a kitchen set, both from IKEA.
“It’d just be in the way,” Shoe said, gesturing toward the painting supplies piled by the entrance to the living room.
Until a year and a half ago Shoe had lived on an old converted logging tug in the False Creek Harbour Authority marina between Granville Island and the Burrard Street Bridge. The Princess Pete had been cramped and dark and worm-eaten, but she’d suited him. One evening, though, while he’d been at the launderette, some fool had flipped a cigarette or a lit match into a box of oily rags, setting fire to the dock and burning the Pete and two commercial fishing boats to the waterline. Shoe had lost everything but his car and his laundry. The house on 3rd was too big for him and suffered from years of neglect, but it was structurally sound and conveniently located within easy walking distance of Granville Island, as well as the Safeway and other amenities on 4th.
Jack hefted his duffle and went upstairs. Shoe hung his soggy coat and hat on the coat tree. The light on
