You said she is still in a coma. The police told me she’s expected to make a full recovery, though.” She deftly levered the cork out of the bottle.
“That’s what the doctors tell me.” I sat in an equally worn burgundy leather tufted armchair, facing her across the coffee table.
“Well, I certainly hope it’s true.” She handed me a glass of wine. It had a rich, slightly fruity aroma. I imagined that that one bottle cost more than what I usually spent on three bottles. She raised her glass. “Here’s to your friend’s full and speedy recovery,” she said. We drank. The wine was very good. I upped my estimate of its cost.
“I understand you were at the marina at around nine that night.”
“That’s right,” Mrs. Waverley replied. “Three evenings a week I park my car at Jericho Beach Park near the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club and run to Granville Island and back. Don’t look so impressed. It’s a total of only a little more than ten kilometres. Ten years ago I used to run more than a hundred kilometres a week. Slowing down in my old age, I suppose.”
“It’s all I can do to run to answer the phone,” I said.
“I’m sure that’s not true,” she responded.
It wasn’t true, or at least not quite, but I was hoping to make her smile. I wanted to see what a smile looked like on that wide, sensuous mouth. I was disappointed when she remained straight-faced. I was going to have to try harder.
“Do you normally run at that time of day?” I asked. “After dark, I mean?”
She shook her head. “No, in the summer usually I run between six and seven, but I was, well, running late that day.” She didn’t even smile at her own joke. “More wine?” she asked, holding out the bottle.
“No, thank you,” I said. My glass was still almost full. Hers was almost empty. She refilled it.
“Your friend — Bobbi?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“I saw her photograph in the newspaper. She’s very attractive. Are you and she lovers?”
I was taken aback by the bluntness of the question. “No,” I sputtered. “Just friends. Good friends, though. We’ve worked together for almost ten years.”
“Is it interesting work?”
“It can be,” I said.
“Have you exhibited?”
“My photographs? Not hardly. No one’s interested in photographs of shopping malls or bridges and helicopters. I did win an award once, though, for a photograph I took when I was working for the Vancouver Sun of a man rescuing a huge potted cannabis plant from a burning house.” Did her ripe, bruised mouth twitch slightly? I couldn’t be sure because she lifted her wineglass and drank.
She lowered the glass. “Ralph Steiner’s photographs of everyday objects are quite beautiful,” she said. “Although I think I prefer Aaron Siskind’s abstract work. I am also a big admirer of Diane Arbus, although some critics feel her work is too intrusive. Of course, you don’t want to simply repeat what’s already been done, do you? However, there are many contemporary photographers whose vision of the common, the ordinary, the everyday, often says more about the values of our society than the rare or the beautiful or the fantastic. Do you work with digital, Mr. McCall? Although many people in the arts disapprove, technology has always been at the forefront of art, don’t you think? Visual artists are always exploring ways of using technology to push the envelope, whether they be painters, sculptors, photographers, or performance artists.”
“I don’t really consider myself an artist,” I said. “I suppose you could say that I used to be a news photographer, but nowadays I’m just a common, ordinary, everyday commercial photographer. I take pictures of whatever people are willing to pay me to take pictures of. Their kids, their dogs, their airplanes or construction sites, their chairpersons of the board.” Not to mention half-naked lady loggers and almost totally naked escort service providers and their girls. As I’d told Bobbi’s father, someone had to do it.
“Do you miss being a news photographer?” Mrs. Waverley asked.
“The pay was better,” I replied. “But only marginally. More regular, though.”
Mrs. Waverley held out the bottle. I held out my glass, although it was only half empty. She topped it up, then poured more wine into her glass. The bottle was nearly empty.
“Are you married, Mr. McCall?”
“I was,” I answered, then added quickly, “Mrs. Waverley, the woman who hired us to photograph that boat, do you have any idea who she might be?”
She shook her head. “No, I don’t. How would I? It wasn’t even our boat. Not that that’s relevant, is it? I’m sorry, I’m rambling, aren’t I? I’ve had too much wine on an empty stomach, perhaps. I should eat something.”
I stood up, prepared to take my leave, albeit regretfully, mission unaccomplished.
“No, please,” she said. “You don’t have to go. Unless you have another appointment, of course, if there’s some other place you need to be.”
“No, there’s no place I need to be. But I don’t want to be an imposition.”
“You’re not imposing. Not at all. I enjoy your company. But perhaps we could talk in the kitchen while I make something to eat.”
“As long as I’m not imposing,” I said.
“You’re not,” she said and started to pick up the tray.
“Let me,” I said, and bent quickly to pick up the tray. A little too quickly. We thumped heads, hard.
She sat down on the sofa, eyes momentarily glazed. Way to go, McCall.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, ears ringing. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she said, rubbing her forehead at the hairline. She stood. “Let’s try that again, shall we?” She gestured toward the tray. “If you would …”
I picked up the tray and followed her into the kitchen without further incident.
chapter ten
“Do you believe in parallel universes, Mr. McCall?”
“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” I said.
She’d made a salad of leafy lettuce, spinach, blue cheese, and pine nuts, but ate very little of it, opening the other bottle of wine instead. We sat at a small, round, glass-topped table in her big, immaculate kitchen. I watched her as she spoke. She sat with her heels on the edge of her chair and her arms folded around her knees. She unwrapped only long enough to reach for her glass of wine, or to nibble on a leaf of lettuce, a crumb of cheese, or a pine nut.
“I read a very strange novel a few years ago,” she said, “about a man who created parallel universes every time he made a choice between two or more courses of action. Every time he chose, say, between
