— You’re invited to dinner.
— Where?
— My house, Peter.
— With your folks?
— Who else? Do you accept?
— I do, said Pete. For sure.
When she kissed him, he could feel her tongue moving and then she grinned against his mouth. He drove her down to her house. She kissed him once more and she got out of the car. At the front door she turned and waved at him and then she went inside.
Pete drove around for awhile before he went home. His mind was at ease, which was funny to realize, since half an hour ago he’d been thinking about a sudden and uncalculated escape from everything. But now, the smell of Emily’s perfume or shampoo lingered in the car. As he drove, Pete found himself reconsidering his plan to move west. Maybe he had a reason to stay here, after all. Maybe he would rent an apartment in town, like Lee’s. Maybe, for once, everything was okay.
Pete left work in the middle of the afternoon on Friday to take some magazines and evangelical cassettes to his grandmother at the hospital. Later, he would think that Roger and the others must have followed him, looking for an opportunity. The gas station was too busy, too exposed.
He did not park in the visitors’ lot at the hospital, where they charged a toll. Instead he parked on a gravel patch at a small construction site a little way down the street. Then he went down the sidewalk, through the hospital entrance, and up to see his grandmother. He didn’t stay long-she was drugged and sleepy. He delivered the items he’d brought, and he stood looking at her and fighting the constriction of his throat.
He was going back across the gravel patch, thinking about Emily, and how the city had taken her away for the weekend, when the boys jumped him. They’d been waiting in a wood-panelled station wagon. They piled out and set on him hard from all directions before he could even make sense of what was happening. He felt knuckles slugging the side of his head. Someone punched him above his right eye. Someone kicked him in the thigh and he stumbled, and they pushed him over into a ditch alongside the gravel. He raked damp snow off rotting leaves as he slid down. He could feel his forehead swelling.
Roger stood on the edge of the ditch and told Pete to stay the fuck away from the Heron Heights girls.
— Four of you, said Pete.
Roger came down and kicked Pete in the stomach, driving the air out of him. He thought he might vomit. Then Pete heard the station wagon pulling away and they were gone. He hauled himself up. There were leaves clinging to his back, leaves in his hair. Nobody had been around to see anything. He managed to get himself into his car, where he sat for a long time, beaten, ashamed.
The radiator made soft clanking noises. Early headlights moved through the predawn outside the window. Lee was sweat-sodden on the pullout bed. First he dreamed the old dream, the boarding house basement, the crippled caretaker shuffling towards him. Then he dreamed he was in solitary confinement in the penitentiary. Brick and steel, enclosed on all sides. In this hole there was no door.
Workless afternoons prior to his hospital visits, Lee would walk the town. It was a strange time for him, when idleness gave way to dark thoughts. Bud frequently occurred to him, the jokes he’d get wrong, and particularly the image of him face down in the bottom of the barge. He thought also of Donna, and found himself looking for things he might get the family for Christmas. Donna used to make Luke and John write to Lee annually, this time of year. Once, a couple of years ago, they’d written about Lee spending Christmas Day with them sometime in the future, after he would be released. The idea had appealed to him, more than he cared to admit, but he hadn’t yet been invited. He didn’t know how to ask.
Everywhere around him was the bustling industry of the holiday season, the store windows packed with signs peddling sales, the ceaseless clatter of Salvation Army bells. Lee went about in his work boots with his collar turned up.
One day, Lee went into a furniture store he’d passed many times. The showroom was warmly lit with crafted desk lamps. Every article of furniture was made of unvarnished wood. He was drawn to a dining room table, ten feet by five. The tabletop was an inch and a half thick. He ran his hand along the rasping smoothness of the naked wood. A grey-bearded man appeared from somewhere.
— All our pieces are handcrafted, said the man. This table is solid oak.
— You make this? said Lee. It’s a hell of a nice piece.
— Thank you. We like to keep our prices negotiable too.
— I got Christmas coming up. I got some people to buy for. Where does the price start out before you negotiate it?
— This table starts at three hundred dollars.
Lee laughed dryly. He seemed unable to withdraw his hand from the sanded tabletop. He cleared his throat and said: Actually, I was wondering if you ever hire. I’m a carpenter myself.
The bearded man nodded.
— For the most part we’re a family business. And to be honest with you, we’re a little slow-going right now. But I’d be happy to put your information into our files.
With some reluctance Lee withdrew his hand from the table.
— You got the time by any chance?
The bearded man had a silver timepiece on his belt. He brought it out. With his timepiece and his beard he was like something out of the olden days: It’s two o’clock, said the man.
— Two o’clock. Well, I’ve got some things to do.
What he had to do was meet Wade Larkin at three o’clock. After the barge accident and the Ministry of Labour inquest, Larkin said he wanted to meet with Lee more frequently, once every three weeks or so, especially since Lee was out of work. They were set to meet, today, in the same spare municipal office where they’d always met, and this appointment would be the last Larkin would see him before Christmas. Not that the meetings ever amounted to much. Larkin couldn’t do anything to get Lee a job, or get Irene into her own room at the hospital. He would just ask his questions and nod and make notes in his notebook, and confirm, as always, that Lee had Larkin’s business card in case of any trouble. At least today Lee would be able to tell him that he’d tried to get a job.
Lee went to the front door of the furniture store. He paused, looked back over his shoulder at the table: I do think that piece is a beauty.
— Thank you, said the grey-bearded man. Happy holidays.
Lee went back onto the street. He bought a pack of cigarettes and some lottery tickets from the pharmacy. He wanted to buy some booze, as well, before the liquor store closed. He had just enough time, perhaps, to pick up a bottle of rye, walk home and stash it, and arrive at the meeting with his parole officer empty-handed.
That night Speedy was on the drums at the North Star. The band he was playing with was driving through Rolling Stones covers. People whirled. Garish coloured lights beamed through the smoke.
Lee and Helen had had a few drinks, and he was feeling good. Helen said she’d had no idea he could be so goddamn fun. Lee had seen Maurice over near the bar, eyeing the dance floor. Maurice nodded to him. In a booth, Helen sat across from him with her chin propped on her hand, smiling. She’d worn a chambray shirt unbuttoned low enough to show the deep crease between her breasts. She had her foot up between Lee’s thighs.
In the adjacent booth sat Gilmore and Arlene. Gilmore leaned over the plywood divider and clapped Lee on the shoulder and asked if they were enjoying themselves. Lee said they were. It was Speedy who’d gotten them out here. Lee had had some drinks with Speedy a few nights earlier and he’d told Lee a band he jammed with was going to be at the roadhouse-would Lee and his lady friend come for some rock ‘n’ roll? Lee was feeling now like a big man.
Gilmore dropped back into his own booth.
— I didn’t know you had friends out here, called Helen.
— I’ve got a few.
She gave his thigh a friendly dig. He looked into the crowd and saw strangers moving to the music.
