continued to speak.
“I know I sound like an old crank, Sam. But why aren’t these kids in school?”
“Summer vacation,” the detective offered.
“Working then? Why aren’t they working? Too damn lazy. Everything handed to them. And they always seem to have money. They’ll never get a job if their parents keep throwing money at them.” 81
The detective opened his eyes and looked around the shop. It was empty.
“What do you know about Joe Mackenzie?” he asked.
“Joe Mackenzie.” George thought about the name for a few moments.
“Old Joe. Not too much. He comes in here once a week for a trim. Works over at the plaza as a security guard. Nice old guy. Doesn’t talk a lot.
Had some kind of trouble with Ontario Hydro a few years ago.”
“What do you know about his wife?”
“Has old Joe done something illegal, Sam? Doesn’t seem like the type of fellow to break the law.”
“Neighbors have been throwing trash down his well,” the detective said.
“You don’t say,” George responded as he returned to the meticulous manicuring of the detective’s head. “Why would they be throwing garbage down old Joe’s well? Did he do something to piss someone off?”
“Not that we know of.”
“He never talks about his wife, Sam,” George added, snapping his gum. “Jesus, I didn’t even know the old guy was married. Does he have any kids?”
“A couple. His wife ran off with them years ago.” George loosened the apron around the detective’s neck as he measured a straight line across the bottom of his hairline.
“Ran off on him. Old Joe didn’t seem like the sort. I figured him for a boring past. Old Joe has a history. Who’d she run off with?”
“We’re not sure,” the detective replied, speaking to the reflection of the barber in the mirror opposite him.
“What’s the garbage in his well got to do with his wife running off?”
“Nothing,” the detective replied. An interesting question. Must remember to jot that down.
George, snapping his gum, reached for a brush and swept the loose hairs off the detective’s neck. Then he briskly flung the apron off and shook it over the floor.
“That’s quite an investigation you’re running,” George said with a smile and snapped his gum. “Where’s it headed?” The detective smiled. Another good question.
CHAPTER NINE
Cathy sat on the hood of the car. She looked out over Lake Ontario, her hair waving in the light breeze that blew off the cold gray water.
Johnny leaned against the side door of the Mazda, his back sheltering a match as he lit up a cigarette.
“You want to get back in the car?” he asked, flipping a used match in-to the sand and making a second attempt, this time successfully, to light his cigarette. Weren’t they down here to get some things straightened out between them? I hate this melodrama. Flowers, sunsets, waves crashing on the shore. Let’s just get in the car and do it.
“Doesn’t the water look like molten steel?” she asked, smiling and shaking the wind from her hair. “It looks solid. I can almost imagine walking across it. It’s looked this way for hundreds, even thousands of years. Isn’t that mind-boggling?”
“Fascinating,”
Johnny muttered, spitting out smoke.
Fucking fascinating!
Cathy turned and gestured to Johnny for a cigarette. He took one out of his package, lit it off his, and still leaning across the hood of the car, handed it to Cathy.
“It’s like time traveling when you look out into a body of water,” she said, turning back to the lake.
“Time traveling,” Johnny muttered. He turned and looked back over the sight of the now defunct psychiatric hospital. All boarded up.
Where’d they put all the loonies? The hospital was being transformed into a community college. Better dressed inmates. How was he going to tell his parents that he’d been kicked out of university? The best thing would be to take the Mazda and disappear. Go to California. Make a life someplace warm. But he didn’t have enough money for that. Cathy must have some dough.
Cathy turned to Johnny. “Don’t mope. I told you that we weren’t going to mess around when you asked me to go for a ride.”
“Why’d you come then?” Johnny demanded, his petulant voice beginning to irritate her.
“I wanted to talk. You’ve been gone a long time and I think there are issues we should address.” She was careful with each word. She didn’t want her voice to slip into the southern belle accent she fell into when she was anxious.
“Well, you didn’t have that attitude the other night.” Johnny shot the words out of his mouth like he was a gun. Giving me a hard-on thinking about it.
“That was a mistake.” Cathy slipped off the hood and onto the beach, her arms crossed. She stepped toward the lake. “I had the nightmare again last night.”
“What?” Smoke came out of Johnny’s nose and tossed and twisted in the wind off the lake. He added with a shrug, “Maybe you should see a shrink.”
Cathy stepped back and leaned on the car. She sucked on her cigarette.
Smoke seeped through her clenched teeth, softly swirling, framing her face. Johnny reached into the car and turned on the radio. I can’t stand this shit. Better to listen to some tunes.
“Everything seems quite lovely at first,” she began. The Beach Boys song “Good Vibrations” drifted out of the car. “The long grass is waving back and forth. Butterflies are slow dancing in the wild flowers. It’s dark but the full moon is creamy soft. I am holding someone’s hand. I can’t see who it is but I feel so happy. And then I trip. The hand releases me.
As I fall to the ground, the earth opens up and I begin to fall down this dark hole. Falling slowly back and forth like a leaf floating from a tree. I try to scream but instead of my cry coming from my throat it rises from deep inside the hole. It’s as if I am falling into myself. I fall and fall.”
“And then you wake up,” Johnny added impatiently as he climbed onto the hood of the car, his legs dangling over the edge. How many times do I have to listen to this shit? He slid off the car and attempted to put his arm around Cathy but she shrugged it off, continuing to stare out at the water.
“I was scared,” Cathy said, her shoulders trembling.
Johnny smacked his hand on the hood of the car. The sounded jolted Cathy as if she’d been slapped on the back of the head.
“The dream doesn’t mean a thing,” he said. “Dreams never do. It’s what happens when your eyes are open that counts. When I was at university there were all these inbreeds walking around analyzing each other.” He grabbed Cathy’s chin and turned it to his face. “Everyone is a fucking cripple, they’d cry. She blames her mother. He blames his father.
Everyone’s got to find someone to blame. We’re all damaged goods. So what! Let’s just get on with what’s left of our lives. Who knows when the expiry date will appear? Let the party begin.” He kissed her hard on the lips.
Cathy pushed Johnny away. “I can’t be that way.” She turned her back on the car. The Animals’ “The House of the Rising Sun” began to play.
“What way?” Johnny grabbed her arm and twisted Cathy around.
“Look at life honestly. Look at it right straight in the eye. We’re all living 84 on the Titanic. This time, there
