Lewis did not open his eyes until the barber took the towel from his shoulders. Tiny pieces of hair floated through the air. Lewis focused on these, consciously avoiding his reflection in the mirror directly in front of him. When the barber had finished sweeping up, Lewis removed the envelope from his inside pocket and took out two bills. He held these out to the barber.
“This is too much.”
“It isn’t. You’ve really helped me here,” Lewis said. He made eye contact with the barber. This was the first time Lewis had done this. It was the first time he’d made eye contact with anyone since leaving the limousine. The barber nodded and took the bills. Lewis walked the barber to the door of the Vice-Regal Suite and held it open for him. When he was gone, Lewis locked the door and slid the chain across. Then he returned to the bathroom. He stood in front of the full-length mirror. He took a very deep breath. He looked up, and looking back at him was someone trustworthy. Someone who was well adjusted. Someone who hadn’t just failed to attend his wife’s funeral.
6
Lewis finds God
Lewis used his teeth to sever the thin plastic string. He put the tags in the garbage can beside the full-length mirror and pulled on the freshly purchased jeans, which were stiff and difficult to button. Pushing with the end of his thumb, he took the toothbrush from its packaging. Remaining shirtless, Lewis began brushing his teeth and was suddenly filled with a sense of comfort, familiarity and home—all three of these sensations caused by a toothbrush.
An hour after his haircut, Lewis had left his hotel room and gone to the Bay, where he’d purchased a complete new wardrobe of clothes in a conservative style, all vastly different from what he typically wore. He’d also bought a razor, deodorant, toothpaste and a toothbrush. It had been quite some time since he’d purchased his own toothbrush, as Lisa had always bought his for him, and unknowingly he had selected one with soft bristles. Lisa had always bought the kind with firm bristles, which was why the toothbrush in his mouth felt broken in and familiar even though it had never been used it before.
Lewis carefully set the brush on the side of the sink. He spit. He walked out of the bathroom and stood over the phone on the bedside table. Picking up the receiver, he pressed a single button and was immediately connected to the concierge.
“I need a garbage bag,” he said. “The thickest one you have.”
“Certainly.”
“And directions to the closest laundromat.”
“Would you like to use our laundry services?”
“No, thank you.”
“We’ll send the directions up with the bag, then.”
“Thank you,” Lewis said.
The garbage bag arrived fifteen minutes later, and came with a map on which the path from the Fort Garry Hotel to the Happy Cat Laundromat had been traced with a pink highlighter. In the bathroom, Lewis removed the clear plastic from his dress shirts. He pulled out the silver pins, making a small pile on the granite to the right of the sink. He let the cardboard fall to the floor. He removed the tags from the remaining six pairs of pants with his fingers. He pulled the socks apart and plucked off the labels. When he’d finished with the underwear too, Lewis stuffed all the clothing into the black plastic garbage bag and swung it over his shoulder.
In the lobby, Lewis pretended not to notice the desk clerk watching him. He walked through the revolving door, his garbage bag just fitting inside it. Having never been in Winnipeg before, Lewis closely followed the directions on his map. He had just turned left onto Corydon Street when the plastic bag started to tear. The split got longer and longer with each step he took. By the time he arrived at the Happy Cat Laundromat, Lewis was cradling the bag in both arms as he would an injured dog.
Once inside, Lewis fit his newly purchased wardrobe into two washing machines. It took twenty-seven minutes for the clothes to be washed, then he transferred them to two dryers. When the clothes were dry, he put them back in the washing machines. He had just begun his third rotation from dryer to washer when a woman walked into the laundromat. She was fascinatingly un-attractive. Her brown hair was dirty and hung just past her shoulders, slightly too long for her face. Her posture was stooped. She did not take steps but shuffled along as if her feet were skis. She was not curvaceous and yet carried too much weight to be thin. Her mouth hung open. There was a mustard stain so perfectly located over her left nipple that it was hard to believe it wasn’t intentional. Lewis could not take his eyes off her.
Pretending to stare at the television mounted in a corner of the room, Lewis watched her. She loaded a single washer and then began reading a celebrity gossip magazine. She had removed her clothes from the dryer and was folding an excessive number of pairs of once white, now grey cotton underwear when she looked up, directly at Lewis, then walked towards him.
“Do you know who I am?” she asked, a pair of panties in her left hand.
“Um. No.”
“I’m God.”
The woman continued to look directly at him. There was no hint of irony or sarcasm in her words. Instinct told Lewis to stop making eye contact immediately and leave the laundromat, but he did neither of these things.
“Really?” he asked instead.
“In the flesh appearing.”
“Then I have a question for you.”
“Ask me whatever you like, but you have to tell me something first. Why are you doing your laundry over and over again?”
Lewis didn’t immediately answer, although he was fully aware that his wife had inspired the repeated washings. Three, maybe four years ago, she’d painted a series of landscapes. They were some of the best work she’d ever done, and certainly the most marketable. Each canvas looked out onto the ocean, a thin line of sandy brown at the bottom leading to a painstakingly rendered sequence of slightly darkening shades of blue.
But then she’d covered them with a sticky lacquer and set them beside an open window. Three days later, she’d returned and the paintings were covered with dust and grime, much of which obscured the subtlety of the many shades of blue.
“Why did you do that?” Lewis asked. Having never succeeded in making anything so beautiful, the thought of her so carelessly destroying it angered him.
“Because I’m so sick of everything being new,” she answered. “Of everything looking new. Aren’t you?”
Inside the laundromat, Lewis looked up from the floor and into the woman’s eyes, surprised by how easy this was to do. “Because I’m sick of everything being new. I want everything to look and feel old.”
“Why would you want that?”
“No. Now it’s my turn.”
The woman bit her bottom lip and nodded almost imperceptibly.
“It’s a big one,” Lewis said.
“I’m ready.”
“Why do bad things happen to good people?”
“Because it makes a good story.”
Lewis did not know how to respond. Both her response and how quickly she gave it were unexpected. “That’s … cruel,” he said finally.
“You gotta think about it as if you were dead. Because at the end of your life, all you’ve got is the story of it. If you were guaranteed a happy ending, how satisfied would you be? You’d want some drama! Some intrigue! You’d want to feel that you’d struggled and overcome, even if you’d lost.”
“So death just makes a good ending?”
“Works every time,” she said. She turned and walked back to her pile of laundry. She carefully folded the last pair of panties. Tucking her basket under her arm, she turned to go. Looking over her shoulder, she caught Lewis’s eye. “Take care,” she said.
“Oh. Okay.”
A dryer buzzed. Lewis removed his dress shirts and then loaded them back into the washing machine.
Just after nine that evening, Lewis wore a very clean dress shirt and a very clean pair of pants as he sat alone in the Palm Room. Although this was his first visit to the hotel bar, Lewis had already fallen in love with it. He loved that the waiters
were all middle-aged men wearing white collared shirts and black vests. He loved that their pants were crisply pressed with a crease down the front. He loved that his drinks arrived on napkins stencilled with the hotel’s logo and were garnished with cubed fruit on a red plastic sword.
But his deepest affection was reserved for the piano player. The black baby grand sat in the exact centre of the room. Behind it was a grey-haired man with extremely long fingers. His entire body would lean to the right when he played the higher notes, and he would straighten himself out as the melody took him back to the centre. Lewis found himself involuntarily leaning with him.
At the conclusion of a rather trill-filled rendition of “The Girl from Ipanema,” the woman from the laundromat sat down at his table.
Lewis nodded.
“You’d never know that shirt was brand new,” she said. “Its colour is so dull, and the collar is no longer crisp. It looks like you’ve had it forever.”
“Shh,” Lewis said, putting his finger to his lips and pointing at the piano player.
She took the seat beside him instead of the one across from him, and together they watched the pianist work. They did not talk to each other. They ordered drinks between songs but otherwise watched in silence. Lewis found this silence extremely comfortable. The piano player concluded his last set thirty minutes after midnight. At 12:31 a.m. Lewis felt her hand cover his. He did not remove it, and at 12:45 a.m., still without speaking, they left the bar together.
Once inside the Vice-Regal Suite, Lewis went directly to the mini-bar. He looked down at his feet, which left prints in the freshly vacuumed carpet. Removing a tiny bottle of gin from the fridge, he shook it as he crossed the living room. Uncapping the bottle, Lewis set it on the coffee table in front of her.
“One dry martini,” he announced and sat down beside her.
“Are you married?”
Lewis had just begun to run his hand through her hair, but he stopped. He looked at his left hand, the ring finger of which still carried his wedding band. “Oh, don’t worry,” he said. “She’s dead.”
“Did I just break the mood?”
“A little.”
“Recently?”
“Shouldn’t you know?”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“How does it work?”
“Tell me how she died.”
“It was just, you know,” he said. He stood up and walked back across the carpet to the mini-bar. With his head inside it, Lewis continued to speak. “I couldn’t find her pulse.”
On the morning his wife died, Lewis had decided to let her sleep in. He got the newspaper, made coffee and relished the day’s normalcy. Ninety minutes later he went back upstairs to wake her. But she did not wake up. Lewis stood over her, counted to fifteen and then shook her. He checked for a pulse but couldn’t find one. Her skin was cold.
He then walked downstairs and began reading the business section of the newspaper. It was the only part of the paper he never read. Tales of mergers, takeovers and investments all felt like secret information, the code of a world he’d never been invited to join. He began reading the stocks alphabetically. He’d reached the Gs when he set down the paper and walked back up the stairs.
In his mind he rehearsed the conversation he would have with her. He pictured her stretching, her arms over her head. You’ll never believe it, he’d say. I thought you were dead. With a small, embarrassed smile on his lips, Lewis opened the bedroom door, but Lisa was still lying in bed. He checked for a pulse. He still couldn’t find one. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he watched daylight brighten the room. He checked once more and then dialled 911. The receiver was still in his hand as he sat down beside her.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered, having already begun to believe that his failure to find a pulse had been what killed her.
Lewis looked up from the carpet and tried to smile. She walked over to him, put her hand over his and squeezed, but Lewis did not squeeze back.
“Really?” she asked. With her other hand she lightly touched his face. Lewis looked down and pulled his hand away. “Lewis, I can’t tell you how unique an opportunity this is for you. Can we at least sleep beside each other? That’s always nice.”
Lewis was struck by her use of the word “nice,” which seemed to be without sarcasm or irony. It had been a long time since he’d heard anyone use it that way.
“Yes,” Lewis said. “That would be nice.”
Holding hands, they walked across the carpet and into the bedroom. They undressed. They climbed into the bed and pulled up the white cotton sheet. Lewis enjoyed the stillness, but then she began violently kicking. He sat up. She kicked and kicked and kicked. When the sheet was untucked from the foot of the mattress, she stopped.
“Why do they do that? It just makes my skin crawl,” she said. She was asleep before Lewis could reply.
The next morning Lewis was woken by the sound of a door opening. Surprising himself with his agility, he leapt from the bed. Pulling off the white cotton sheet, he wrapped it around himself and poked his head out of the bedroom. The woman was dressed and was taking the chain off the door.
“Where are you going?” Lewis asked.
“I gotta get to work.”
“You have a day job?”
“You sound surprised.”
“Being God isn’t a full-time gig?”
“Who would I invoice?”
“What’s your name?”
“There are so many.”
“Tell me.”
“Pick one.”
“Satan?”
“Come on. Take this seriously. Not many people get to do this.”
“Lisa?”
“Not very grand. But okay,” Lisa said. She left.
Lewis closed his eyes and listened to the sound of the door as it shut. He heard the brush as the bottom of the door met the frame. He listened to the ridiculously concise melody of the lock mechanism sliding into place. Then he dropped the sheet. He picked up his pants. He was surprised to find that his wallet was still there, with his money inside it. He checked the inside pocket of his jacket, but the envelope remained, seemingly untouched.
7
The theft of a white Honda Civic
Aberystwyth remained crouched behind a red pickup truck on the third floor of the Ultramart Parking Garage, breathing quietly through her gills, as the white Honda Civic pulled into the parking spot three cars away. She waited until the driver was in the elevator, then stood and walked to the car. She kept her arms extended, but her steps remained awkward, and she wobbled on her long green legs.
Awkwardly kneeling at the Honda’s back right tire, she reached into the wheel well and slid her hand along the smooth curved metal. Aby had already searched the back right wheel well of every other car, truck and van that had parked in this garage during the last seventy-two hours and found nothing, so her expectations were low. She opened her gills and pushed out a sigh, but then her fingers touched something small and rectangular that was magnetized to the steel. Aby pulled out her arm, and in her hand was a small black box. It took some time before she found the tiny button she needed to push to make the lid open, but when she did she found a key inside.
Aby let out a small cry of victory, her voice reverberating off the concrete walls of the parking garage. With the key in her hand, she approached the driver’s door. The webbing of her fingers made it difficult to push the key into the lock, but it turned easily once she got it in. Opening the door was simple, but getting behind the wheel proved more difficult.
The distance between the front of the seat and the pedals was considerably shorter than the length of her legs. Holding on to the roof of the car, Aby curled her right leg underneath the steering column. She sat down so that her knees were on either side of the wheel. She looked at the dashboard. She ran her fingers down from the steering column until she found the ignition. She inserted the key. She turned the key towards her, remembered that she was supposed to turn it a
way from her and tried again. The engine started.
Having memorized the difference between the symbols “D” and “R,” Aby successfully put the car into reverse. She reversed two inches and then stopped. Twisting out of the car, she walked to the back to see if everything was fine. It was. She returned to the driver’s seat, curled around the steering wheel and backed up two more inches. She got out to make sure she hadn’t hit anything. She hadn’t. Aby repeated this process until, seventeen minutes later, she had successfully backed out of the parking space.
Pushing the stick from R to D, Aby turned the wheel all the way to the right, moved a few inches forward, then got out and checked the front of the car. She hadn’t collided with anything. She repeated this pattern, gaining confidence as she followed the out signs, but her progress was still punctuated by stops to make sure she hadn’t hit anything. On the down ramp there were no cars to collide with, so she made no stops. By the time she reached P1, she was able to drive the twenty feet to the ticket window without interruption.
As Aby approached the kiosk, she was so focused on keeping the gas and brake pedals straight that she almost forgot to cover her gills. This was something Pabbi had repeatedly and emphatically stressed. Looking around, she found nothing that would suffice and resorted to pulling her T-shirt up and over her mouth. There was little she could do about her green skin. A rectangle of paper, which Pabbi had told her was called a parking stub, was in the left-hand corner of the dash. Rolling down the window, Aby stopped and held out the stub. She kept her eyes down but needn’t have, as the cashier didn’t even look up.
Aby handed him one of the bills Pabbi had given her. The cashier gave her other bills and some coins. A long, skinny barrier in front of her lifted up, and Aby, blinking with excitement, drove forward. It had taken her fifty-seven minutes to exit the parking garage.
Everything Aberystwyth knew about being unwatered she had learnt six weeks earlier, from her father, Pabbi, who lived on the fourteenth floor of an apartment building in an area of town Aby rarely frequented. Late one evening, completely unannounced, Aby had swum to his door and knocked. She felt nervous in the hallway. She knocked again. The door was opened, suddenly and with such force that Aby had to hold onto the door jamb to avoid being pulled inside.