Juliet Was a Surprise Read online

  ALSO BY BILL GASTON

  NOVELS

  Bella Combe Journal

  Tall Lives

  The Cameraman

  The Good Body

  Sointula

  The Order of Good Cheer

  The World

  SHORT STORIES

  Deep Cove Stories

  North of Jesus’ Beans

  Sex Is Red

  Mount Appetite

  Gargoyles

  POETRY

  Inviting Blindness

  DRAMA

  Yardsale

  NON-FICTION

  Midnight Hockey

  To Lise, and love

  CONTENTS

  House Clowns

  Cake’s Chicken

  Any Forest Seen from Orbit

  Tumpadabump

  Petterick

  Geriatric Arena Grope

  To Mexico

  Black Roses Bloom

  At Work in the Fields of the Bulwer-Lytton

  Four Corners

  House Clowns

  He woke up to the challenge of a mountain sun blaring through thin white curtains. Without lifting his head from the pillow he took stock of the bedroom, feeling beyond it the empty cottage and a hollow presence that felt a bit too eager. It could go either way. He decided he’d better stand up, get right out there and see what came.

  After morning ablutions, he searched the cupboards for coffee but found none. This was fine. Coffee was a mistake, especially now; even two cups hid a nasty tipping point. He was here to try hard. He had made these arrangements and driven all this way not just to find the old clarity but to keep it. He’d told no one. Strings of that sort felt like confusion.

  Inside the backyard shed, beside some fishing rods, he hefted a wooden shovel, thick and designed for healthy work. He smelled a cool, grass-clipping mustiness, a waft of childhood. The question, Did I make a huge mistake choosing an urban life? came with a ripple of panic, which he quelled by stepping back outside. Bouncing the shovel, he scanned the lawn for a worm spot, some wild place that wasn’t grass, shrubbery or flowers. There was nothing diggable all the way down to a wall of cattails and the lake. An inner voice asked almost sarcastically why he was breathing quickly, especially with all this stillness around him and a view he’d paid for and driven four hours to see. He brought his gaze up. Okay, there was Pinanten Lake, liquid black glass mirroring a dark mountain on the far shore. The lake was speckled with boats, people fishing. Trolling silently, eerily, the boats all had little electric motors. He’d read in the McGregors’ leaflet that gas motors were banned.

  The leaflet had also bragged of the lake’s “world class trout.” His sarcastic voice had relished telling him that the flip side to all this promised fishing glory was that there would be nothing else to do here. But he’d fish. He could do it. He could stab a hook into a worm and not be thrown off course by its writhing. He could reel in a trout. And fry one. Butter, flour, salt. He’d famously taken Casey fishing that time and got nothing, so if he caught a trout, he could call his son and tell him. It would be the perfect reason to call, all the way to Belgium. At the phone he’d joke lightly, a trout shining in the sink. “Casey. Remember how we went to Sooke and didn’t catch anything? I’ve felt like a failure for years, so—” The call would continue perfect, lively with Casey’s questions. None of which would ask if his mother was there with him, or was he taking his meds this time, or was this in fact a vacation.

  The shovel wasn’t tall, so he’d have to stoop. Last week, in a gesture to his coming great health, he’d thrown away his velcro lumbar brace. Without support, his back felt precipitous, a cliff of possible pain on every side. He pictured the movements of shovelling.

  He recalled all the roadside bait signs. He would hunt worms in his car.

  But the signs had proved fraudulent. At each gas station, Bubba’s, the outfit that supplied the worms, was behind on deliveries. A clerk joked, “Maybe Bubba got into the beer,” and “Bubba’s probably lying in his hammock.” And as it always goes with these things, when he tried the Bubba-into-the-beer quip himself on the next baitless clerk, the young muscleman threw his head back and squinted, hostile, possibly a relative of Bubba. He saw now that his journey had dangerous choreography.

  He drove all the way into Kamloops, finally locating a prize tub of worms—in a 7-Eleven, no less—and learned from reading the tub that Bubba’s Bait Inc. was a corporation with a website for an address. He wasn’t sure what any of this might mean. He smiled at the notion that these might be multinational worms. But fishing now felt less pure, and less destined. At his car, in the rising heat of parking lot blacktop, he peeled open the tub’s plastic lid to find in peat moss maybe eight thick, alarmingly flaccid worms, barely alive, the grey green of turned bologna. He pressed the lid back, seeing he could be nudged off the journey by worms. The flip side was that they didn’t look capable of agony if he stuck a hook in.

  HE MANAGED TO KINDLE some fishing spirit on the return drive. His clarity was deepening, and he noted with a nod the hawk eyeing him from a fence post as he glided past some dry fields. Then he saw, pulling into the carport, the cottage’s front door ajar. This wasn’t too disturbing, but as he got out of the car there were voices coming from inside. This wasn’t necessarily horrible either; a rural place, maybe neighbours dropped by and such. What was bad was the voices stopping at the sound of his car door closing. Worse, they stayed stopped, and after a time he could hear whispers.

  He stood beside his car, not moving, worm tub against his leg. He could turn now, get in his car and fly. But that was probably ridiculous. And he’d heard a woman’s voice in there. Not that that changed anything, not these days. But this was all wild thinking. There was a clear reason for people to be in there. They wouldn’t be the owners, since there was no car. Unless, a taxi. Their leaflet said they lived here winters and travelled summers. Maybe something had happened to their trip. But wouldn’t they have phoned? They—

  “Hello!” A young man popped out smiling, his hand already in a wave.

  “Yes. Hi.” His own hand came up automatically. The young man was twenty-five, thirty, and unshaven. Tanned, with startling blue eyes. Actually, he was extremely handsome. His T-shirt was filthy, his hiking shoes looked beaten up or even found. It was too hot for those jeans. His blond hair looked unwashed. But his good looks were male-model calibre. Who dressed like that with a face like that? His manner, the way he spoke, showed that he knew he was handsome.

  “Fishin’?” The fellow glanced at the worms and lifted his eyebrows rhetorically.

  “Bubba’s,” he answered, feeling stupid as he turned the tub to show him the lid. The leaflet said the McGregors had raised kids here, kids who had “loved the place,” so maybe this was a child’s ill-timed return. Now a young woman appeared too. Without looking at her, the man raised his arm to let her in, and she stuck her shoulder into his armpit. She seemed nervous and fixed her gaze on her boyfriend’s cheek.

  “Are you the owner?” asked the young man.

  “I’m the renter,” he answered, too keen to claim even that bit of ownership when of course he should have said nothing, seeing how the young man’s question revealed so much. And now, at this answer, the woman turned his way with a beautiful, ripe-peach smile.

  The young man said, “Hmm.” It was too long a pause. “This is strange,” he said at last. “So are we. The renters.”

  She continued to smile sweetly at him. That light in her eyes he knew he would take to bed with him tonight to dwell on, parsing it for what might be its defiance, or its dangerous lie, or—this was possible now, given his deepening journey— its beautiful welcome.

  THEY WENT INTO the kitchen to “sort this thing out.” Before
sitting down, the man swung round to offer his hand. Introductions followed. The young man was Adam, his girlfriend Eden. She was not Adam’s equal in looks. But her body was sinuous, and he had always had a weakness for white halter tops. Her spirit was eager and well tuned. He bet she got what she wanted. When the unlikelihood of their names dawned on him he froze, and Adam said, grinning, “I know.”

  “We get lots of jokes,” said Eden. “But I mean, I could have been Eve?”

  “You did have a long history of snakes,” Adam said, pretending to glower.

  “Oh, stop,” Eden said, smiling down at her tea fixings.

  This including him in such intimacy alarmed him even as it seduced him. It could be signalling the best, or the worst.

  He left a polite amount of time, then gently slapped the kitchen tabletop. “So. Okay.”

  Adam looked up and agreed. “Yes.”

  Eden made to move behind him, ostensibly to get something. When he quickly scraped his chair back from the table to keep her in view, he hoped it looked like he was just trying to position himself to include her.

  “Okay.” This time he slapped his knee. “So you rented, starting today. For how long?” He had a series of questions ready, ones that wouldn’t directly accuse them.

  “A week,” Adam said.

  “So it’s a double booking, then,” he said, nodding. “It looks like they … the, ah, what’s their name—” He hoped his act of forgetfulness looked convincing.

  “McGregor,” said Adam. His knowing the name would have been a relief were it not for him pointing his chin at the stack of mail on the counter beside the phone. Why would he gesture to it unless it was his source of the name? And why had he gone through their mail?

  “Did they charge you the same price? Five hundred?” He was especially happy with this question, though as he said it, he felt transparent. He saw them trade a glance.

  “Um, I’m pretty sure we actually paid more, come to think of it. Didn’t we, honey?”

  Eden, brow knit, nodded. “I think it was more like seven, wasn’t it?”

  They got the price almost right—it was seven fifty—but they didn’t look like the kind of people who spent that much money then forgot the exact amount. They had no car. Maybe no luggage.

  “Sounds like you got a deal,” said Adam, the humour in his tone maybe also a challenge.

  He wanted to ask about the no car. He tried for the right words.

  “Okay. So if we do decide who shouldn’t be here, if we flip a coin or something, if it comes down to that—well, you seem to lack transportation?” He tried to look sympathetic.

  “We hitch-hike. Or we just hike. We like it. See the country. Meet the people.”

  “Where are you coming from?”

  “Calgary.”

  “I could drive you out to the highway if you lose.”

  “Hey—I’m not saying we’re going.” Now Adam wagged a finger at him, and the wagging grew to belligerent pointing. “We’re not flipping a coin. We’re here. And how do we know you’re not some kind of—”

  “Idea!” Eden stepped in, smiling brightly. “The McGregors. It’s their mistake. When we tell them what happened, they’ll make it up to us. A refund. They have to! And look at the size of this place. Two storeys, two giant bedrooms, giant lawn, lake. We won’t even see each other if we don’t want to. Half-price vacation. And hey, maybe even we all fall in love and have a time.” She put a hand to her heart, peered ceilingward and batted her eyes. “Maybe in ten years we’ll be writing letters to each other.”

  He didn’t know where to look. Eden said all this in the easiest, funniest way, such a skilful overture of friendship that any response but acceptance would seem crippled, almost evil. Was there much danger, really? If the choreography was violent, wouldn’t they have done it by now?

  “Well, today it’s too late for anyone to be leaving anyway,” he said. He shrugged in a friendly way and lifted his eyebrows. “We can try calling them. The McGregors. See what happened. I think in their note they said they were travelling in Europe. I think France and Italy. I don’t know how we’d … maybe a neighbour?” He was babbling now. For one stupid moment he’d almost said he had a son in Europe, a son who could somehow help. He needed sleep.

  “We know what happened,” said Adam. “They double booked. Why bug them?”

  “Maybe some neighbour would have a number to call.”

  Adam turned his teacup with fingertips in fast circles, the cup obviously hot. Eden gazed around the kitchen. He had not touched his own tea, nor had he thanked Eden when she put it in front of him.

  “We can be your house clowns.” Eden put her hands to her head like antlers and swayed back and forth, big-eyed and unsmiling. Her eyes were playful but ironic and—he didn’t know why he thought of this word—literate. But still possibly dangerous. There weren’t two bedrooms, there were three. None were giant. Anybody, especially any woman, knows exactly how many bedrooms they are renting. Vacationing renters don’t hitch-hike. They just don’t.

  HE DIDN’T THINK SLEEP was in the cards, and he was right. He lay staring at the ceiling, blinking rapidly if he blinked at all. They didn’t want him phoning the McGregors. They had no food, no car to go get some. It felt portentous for someone as handsome as Adam to dress like that. Even if—even if they were just a couple of hippies looking for vacant houses to crash in, as a kind of lifestyle, well, what kind of wimp was he? Why let himself be bullied like this?

  In the deeps of the night his thoughts curled faster, possibilities he knew were less and less reasonable even as he thought them. Adam was the son he’d never had, a son who would find him wise and worth listening to. Eden would invite him to their bed and Adam would leave, nodding. Eden’s nipples petalled out with Celtic-knot tattoos, and Adam’s lower back bore a prison-ink swastika that, when examined under a microscope, proved to be the Upanishads in Sanskrit. They were roving cannibals waiting for a certain phase of moon, one he could discover only by reading the codes on the soles of their feet. Eden had used “house clowns” in the Shakespearian sense, and he, as king of this rental house, would receive flawless ironic instruction, emerging after a week humbled but clear-seeing and cured. Again and again he was surprised, tortured and killed in all manner of fresh ways. But most creative was how he was manipulated psychically. All these thoughts, for instance, issued from them. Even this one. These weren’t his thoughts at all. These two were clowning with him already.

  HE WOKE UP FULLY ALERT. It didn’t feel like he’d slept much. An hour, maybe two, judging from the grit when he blinked. The smell of bacon wafted from below. He hadn’t brought bacon. For now, it was their only message to him; he could hear no chat. He pulled on yesterday’s clothes. He would shower and shave after he assessed things.

  Out in the hall he stopped and checked his wallet. His cards were all there, and sixty-five dollars. Something was wrong. He thought hard. Yes—he’d returned yesterday with only forty-five. This should have been a relief, or even funny, except it hinted at the kind of subtlety these two might keep employing. Except, he might have had sixty-five. Had he bought the worms with cash or card? He pictured himself in that 7-Eleven. He could see the hotdogs rolling on their greasy rollers; he could see the two kids in line with their neon-coloured slushies. But he couldn’t see what left his hand.

  In bare feet, he walked lightly so they didn’t know he was in the kitchen until Eden turned with her frying pan of eggs.

  “Jesus!” She put her free hand to her throat. “You got me.”

  The hall bathroom flushed and Adam emerged, wiping his hands on his shorts. He was showered and shaven, and his clothes were clean. His T-shirt had a Prince of Whales logo with a leaping killer whale beneath.

  It was not lost on him that Calgary lacked whales.

  “Yay,” said Adam, not smiling but eyeing the food hungrily. “Breakfast.”

  “Good-looking bacon,” he said, just to see what they’d say. It did look good. Thick.
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br />   “Saw a sign a few miles back,” said Adam. “Found a bike in the shed and went lookin’. The sign said ‘double-smoked.’ Still don’t know what that means. Didn’t see no smoke-shack nor hog-butcherin’ types lollin’ about.” He chuckled at his own jokes while turning to get forks from the drawer. “But I got those eggs too. Organic.”

  He went for his wallet. “Well, I think I owe you … twenty.” He watched them both closely.

  “No, no. Get us later. And there’s no way it’s twenty.”

  “Hey”—Eden pretended to chide Adam—“it might be. We haven’t seen him eat yet. These skinny ones are the worst.”

  He offered his own polite chuckle as they chatted about how skinny Japanese always won hotdog-eating contests, and wasn’t it strange that such contests were on the sports channel. He helped set the table. He served himself at the stove. He ate some bacon, eggs and toast after watching them eat first and waiting a minute. Same with the tea they were drinking. Though he desperately wanted coffee now. There was general conversation about how they’d all slept. Adam had like a log, Eden never did well in a new bed the first night, and he of course had slept well, thank you. Eden’s plans for the day involved nothing more than lying in the sun, reading and “a giant cold beer at four precisely.” Adam was going to take the day as it came, but might try fishing, and could he maybe mooch a few of those worms? Then it was agreed that maybe he and Adam would take the canoe out together and try for a big one. After breakfast Eden and Adam did the dishes, hunkered down like people trying to repay a debt.

  Not saying where he was going, he slipped out and climbed into his car. Once on the road, he was aware that he could simply keep going. The clothes and whatever else left behind wouldn’t add up to much. Or he could go straight to the police, though he didn’t know what he’d say to them. And anyway, if these two did mean him harm it was beyond a police matter, it was personal, it was a choreography rising up from the deep forces that clarified all things.

  He pulled into the Pinanten General Store. At one point he found he was smiling as he shopped, and this made him smile wider and shake his head. He bought coffee and fruit and something for dinner—a package of ground bison, tomato sauce, linguini, a lettuce head—and also a bag of marshmallows, he didn’t quite know why, other than the orange-blue-yellow squares on the package seemed perfect, like he’d just discovered himself in a new land and this was its national flag.