Confidence Read online

  He actually had him halfway up the stairs when the Bean stopped and said, “Daddy, what is called when you look in someone’s eyes?”

  “Come on, sweetie, no stopping on the stairs.”

  “What’s it called, Daddy?” said the Bean, motionless, “When you look inside someone’s eyes.”

  “Bernard, I’m going to count to three.”

  “What is it, sweetie?” Kara called from the kitchen.

  “It’s called luff,” said Bernard. “Daddy, let’s do luff. Look inside my eyes.”

  “Okay baby,” said Ivor, almost floating with relief. “We’ll do luff in bed.”

  When he came down Kara was watching a model competition show. He thought he would try to watch it for once. He sat and said, “Who’s winning?”

  She switched off the TV in answer.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Do you want to chat?”

  “About what?”

  She turned her face to the black screen and was quiet.

  He gave this a minute. Then he said, “What is it?”

  “Ivor,” she said quietly, “do you ever lie to me?”

  “Why do you ask that?”

  “You don’t answer my question.”

  “The phone calls today,” he said. “It was her. You’re right.”

  “Why didn’t you talk to her?”

  “I did, actually.”

  She stiffened beside him. “I see.”

  “I had to. She kept calling. She wanted help.”

  “Oh for Christ’s sake. When does she not want help.”

  “I know. And I was very firm today. I was very tough. I told her I couldn’t help her any more and she would have to find someone else.”

  “What was it this time?”

  “Oh,” he said, leaning his head back and shifting his body towards the television. “Her computer again. It’s always broken. Turn it back on. I would watch this one.”

  “And she knows no other men, no other people to help her with her computer.”

  “Well, that’s what I said. Anyway, it’s done. I was firm. And I think this time . . . I am quite confident, anyway, that she won’t be calling here again. I told her you didn’t like it and that seemed to convince her.” He breathed out, waited.

  “If she calls here one more time,” said Kara, “I’m going to call her back, and tell her to leave us alone.”

  “Okay,” said Ivor. “That’s fine. I am quite confident that won’t happen.”

  She sat for a second, and then picked up the remote. When the TV went back on, Ivor settled back with the beginnings of what could have been actual relief. And by the time they had both commented on a girl who looked a little horsey and one who might be a little masculine and one who had what could possibly have been a scar under her eye, it was relief like aspirin to a headache.

  And when the show ended and he suggested they not watch the news because they had all been hearing the news all day and they knew it would be just the same accusations and denials about the mayor, she surprisingly said yes and she snapped off the set and stretched and yawned, he knew that they were through the crisis; his boy was sleeping and healthy, if mad, happily mad, upstairs, and they were safe in their home. And it was he, Ivor, strong protector, who had shielded his family from the threat. He almost wanted to tell Kara, so proud was he of himself, but Kara might not be so proud.

  She went up and he said he would be right behind her.

  Once he heard her brushing her teeth he switched on his tablet, in the darkness of the living room, for actually he couldn’t resist checking to see if there were any new developments in the drug-taking mayor story. There weren’t, and he found himself hoping that actually the drug tape would never be found, for he felt sorry for the guy, an obese guy with enough stress in his life who had just wanted to do something fun for once, who had just wanted to be with some cool tough guys in a place far away from his suburban house and his family, a place with no decisions and no women, and who could be harmed by this? If all of us had the video of our addictions exposed then there would be no more comfortable houses littered with soap bubble guns and markers, no more children sleeping in beds under steam-engine wallpaper.

  He was stretching himself when he heard a tapping, as if someone was at the window. He looked out the window at the narrow alley between the houses and saw nothing. He went to the sliding doors to the backyard and looked there too. There was a thump and more tapping from somewhere close and he stood still to listen.

  As he listened the kitchen seemed darker than before. It was a scratching, and some rustling, extremely close, possibly from inside the kitchen cupboards. His heart was beating quite fast now, and he opened the cupboard doors and sprang back, as if something might squirt out at him from in there, but there was nothing.

  The slithering was from the wall, from inside the wall. And an insistent crackling, the sound of insulation being removed, clawed or chewed, the sound of his house’s guts being devoured.

  His phone bleated in his back pocket.

  He brought it quickly to his ear, without thinking. “Hello,” he said, and regretted it.

  “Fuck you,” she said.

  “Fuck me. Jasmine, why? Why fuck me.”

  “You know why.”

  “I do not. Jasmine, I do not. I did everything I could for you today, and now we are—”

  “No you did not. You tricked me, again, you snake, you fucking ghoul.”

  “I honestly have no idea what you are talking about. I did the last thing I can do for you today.”

  “I found you out. I know what you did.”

  He did not answer this because he wanted silence so that he could hear where they were, exactly, in the walls. Perhaps they had come down from the attic. Perhaps they were in the heating ducts.

  “I looked at the tapes after I let the water out. Of the sink. And I saw the labels. Those weren’t the tapes of us. You gave me bullshit tapes.”

  “Oh, shit. Jasmine. Of course the labels were different. They were fakes. I called them different things. To disguise them. Don’t you understand? Everyone does that.”

  “Why should I believe anything that comes out of your mouth? Everything you say is a lie. It always has been.”

  “Look more closely at the labels, Jas.” He was whispering as loudly as he could. Overhead, more dark footsteps: those were of his wife. “Look at them, you’ll see little x’s I put in pencil. That’s my code. The other things are just to throw people off.”

  “See?” she said, inhaling simultaneously. He waited for her to expel the weed smoke. “See? Everything’s a fake. Everything you touch is a lie.”

  “Jasmine. I don’t know what to tell you. Except that not everybody wants to hurt you. Not everybody is lying to you. Why would they do that? What would be in it for them?”

  “I’m looking at one right now,” she said. He could hear the music and shouting of a television. “It says Professional Development Day. This one says Market. So where are our tapes?”

  “You see, Jas? You see? Those titles are so boring. That’s why I wrote them. Listen to me. Those are bullshit titles. Look for the x’s.

  “It’s too late for that.”

  “Too late?” Overhead, still footsteps, his wife still awake, and now a thumping underfoot. Under the floorboards? He said, “Why is it too late?’

  “I burned them. I burned them all. I dried them off, I soaked them in lighter fluid, and I melted them all. Your fucking family tapes.”

  “Okay, good, I’m glad to hear that. Now there is no trace, no trace whatever of our relationship.”

  “Oh yes there is. You have them, and I’m coming to get them.”

  He tried saying her name several times but she had disconnected.

  Kara was behind him, ghostly in a white nightie. “Were you on the phone?”

  “No. Quiet.”

  “What?”

  “Listen.”

  They stood facing each other in darkness. She sa
id “What is it?” and he shushed her again. There was the shuffling, and the cracking of something plastic. In the walls.

  Together they moved to the sliding glass doors. He double-checked the locking handle. He snapped down the locks on the windows to either side. Then the two of them stood in the windows, looking into the black garden, trying to make out which moving shadows might have been fur, and whether there were any masks in the darkness, looking in at them. He reached his hand toward her and she took it.

  SLEEPING

  WITH AN ELF

  Their favourite restaurant they called the Elf, not because that was its name—its name was something as trying-too-hard as Harvester or Barbershop or Bicycle Shed—actually Bicycle Shed was what they called it too, sometimes, because there were bicycles and tractor parts hanging on the walls, or sometimes they just called it Beards, as when they asked each other, do you want to see beards tonight? Its real name was not well known because of course it was not displayed anywhere; to have a sign on the window in that neighbourhood, at that time, was to admit to an unseemly ambition; you might as well have put up a sign saying Franchise, Inc (actually, they agreed, that would be an extremely clever name). They called it the Elf because there was an elf who worked there. He really did look exactly like an elf in a Christmas drawing: he was just over five-feet tall, it looked like, even in his lace-up boots, and extremely skinny and pointy and tiny in all regards, and wore a tall wool toque, in all weather and even in the heat of the open kitchen as he darted in and out from behind the counter carrying tall beers made from local hops and spring water with labels printed on threshing machines, and house-smoked pork bellies and taro chips and bacon-salted brussels sprouts, his stringy little arms all knotted up and his tiny tattoos writhing; his nose was hooked and even his ears seemed a little too large and upright for his body, holding up the enormous black wool cap like trestles. The elf never spoke to Dominic and Christine, or to anybody; he was an angry elf, and that seemed natural, part of the decor too, like the host with the moustache waxed into curlicues and the meticulously banal folk music on the sound system.

  “So where would you meet yours?” said Christine. “Online?”

  Dominic did not answer, partly because he did not want to—of course he would go online, like everybody else, but he was not ready to talk about his part in the dangerous game, he was only ready to hear Christine’s—and partly because he was trying to swivel his body around a few degrees so he could get at least a glimpse of the tables to his right where he thought he had seen Concetta Accoglienza sitting with a tightly clad young woman possibly her daughter. This operation made him wince, because of his stupid fucking hip and knee and whatever the fuck was fritzing out or rotting or disappearing in his nerves. His cane was gone, taken away with his coat and hooked onto a rack near the entrance. He was going to try to do without the cane if he had to make it past the kitchen to the washroom. Which was good, he could be stronger, he could try to do without it more, and Christine hated seeing him with it.

  “Don’t look at her,” said Christine. “Don’t you want to play the game?”

  “At who?” he said almost automatically, and then, “Yes, sure, I love the game.” Which was true, and it was what they were there for, to play the dangerous game; it was exciting in a place like this, flashing with bodies and strangers, exactly what the dangerous game was all about. “Wait a second, the idea is we’re going to talk about who we’re going to sleep with, and I can’t turn around and look at a girl?”

  “It’s Concetta Whatever’s daughter, it must be, they look identical. You can’t stare at girls no matter what I’m talking about because it’s rude no matter what. What’s her name, Lachupacabra, what? It’s a crazy name. What about her, Concetta? She’s nice, she likes you, you like the older ladies.”

  “Can’t stare at girls when you’re talking, can’t do this, can’t do that. But I should do this.”

  “Oh, lighten up. I’m just suggesting.”

  “I should have sex with Concetta Accoglienza. See, it’s not hard to pronounce. Do you want me to?”

  Christine shrugged. “I’m just suggesting. I’d be okay with it. What’s the matter? You look like you’re taking a big shit.”

  “I’m hurting. Sorry. Not supposed to talk about that.” He was hurting, but he was also eager to turn the conversation away from sleeping with Concetta Accoglienza because of course he had already slept with her, more than once, but not for a long time, years ago, in those days when he and Christine were hurting each other so ferociously. And before Concetta had come into the money and started the art foundation and married the developer and gone directly out of Dominic’s league. It was still not something that Christine needed to know.

  “You want to go home?”

  “Of course not. This is trying, like I promised. This is me trying.”

  “Try to have fun.”

  “I could have more fun if you’d let me at least look to see who is here. I want to see the costumes.” Feeling the sparks up his spine, he pulled his hips around and sat facing the room and the front door.

  Everyone was pointy and small in there, including Dominic and Christine. Dominic was feeling particularly small since he had hurt his hip, or had whatever mysterious thing had happened, his nerves mysteriously dying for no reason any of the endless tests could discern. He was still bigger than the elf. “Oh,” said Dominic, “oh, look, this guy’s too good, a farmer, do you see the farmer? By the window?”

  He looked and Christine looked at a guy, a bearded guy who couldn’t have been older than twenty-three, sitting with his legs stretched out into the waiter’s path, a guy with a heavy wool sweater, and tweed trousers and a tweed cap and knee-length Wellington boots.

  “He has to sit that way so everyone can see the boots,” said Christine. “Without the boots it’s just casual wear. Look at the girl.”

  The girl with him was not from an Irish bog in a fashion spread about tweed, she was from a city, but from another city, a city in the 1940s. She had the pencil skirt and the glossy black bangs and the blouse with the puffy sleeves, and the line up the back of her stockings and the chunky shoes. Her lips were the sharpest outline of red in the room, except perhaps for Concetta Accoglienza’s.

  “It’s good,” said Dominic, “it’s a Rosie the Riveter thing.”

  “It’s a pinup thing. She has tattoos. Anchors and that.”

  “She does burlesque. God help us. When will it die.”

  “God save us from burlesque,” said Christine, “and the lectures of fat girls.”

  “It’s hilarious,” said Dominic. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the next guy that came in was a pirate. Then Louis the Fourteenth. What are you going to be?”

  “Sad clown.”

  “Sexy cop. Robot. Bumblebee.”

  Through the big garage-door front window they could see women passing who were dressed as prostitutes, because they were. It was Friday night. The prostitutes, sadly, would all be gone soon, if there were more places like the Elf, which would be very good for Dominic’s property value but much less good for his sense of romance, of being alive. Strange how prostitute was never a costume you’d ever see in here, in the Elf.

  Across the street was the white fluorescence of Djibouti Cafe and Restaurant (Business Club), thank god still there. It was never romantic in there or just outside it.

  “Hey, there’s Frederick, at the bar.” Dominic waved at the hunched figure in his black hoodie, but Frederick didn’t turn around. He was writing something on index cards spread in front of him. His video camera was on the bar, pointed at him, its red light on.

  “Poor old Frederick,” said Christine.

  “You wouldn’t do him, would you? I think no friends, it has to be, none of my guy friends.”

  “Of course not. None of my girlfriends either.”

  “So where would you get your guys? Who do you want to do? I am fascinated by this. I want to know everything. I want to know what it is you want to hap
pen—you want romance, you want a nice date and a guy who pays attention to you, or you want—”

  “Jesus Christ no,” said Christine. “I want a twenty-one-year-old. Or a nineteen-year-old. I don’t care if he even talks.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Is that sick?”

  “No. No, it’s not sick. It’s a little frustrating.”

  “Frustrating?”

  “Well, just sad that I want to do you all the time, like every day and every night, just like a nineteen-year-old, and you don’t seem to want that.”

  “That’s not fair. That’s not.” Christine sighed and was unable to come up with anything else, or so it seemed to Dominic who was vindicated.

  “I get it,” he said. “I get it. It’s not natural to stay with one partner for so many years. Believe me, I get it. I can’t believe we are finally admitting this.” He caught the glance of the elf, who was rushing by, and the elf actually bared his upper teeth as if snarling. “I would want to know every detail of it, though. Everything, including technical specs like hydraulics, displacement.”

  “You are threatened by the nineteen-year-old. I don’t know if I could do it anyway.”

  “Even I wouldn’t do a nineteen-year-old.”

  “Okay, so tell me who you would do? You’d go to your exes, first, I guess.”

  “I guess.” Dominic slumped a bit, eased the tension on his right buttock, and then let the pain shift from his outer to his inner thigh. His exes were all almost as old as he was now. Concetta Accoglienza was much older. Although she looked like perfume itself over there in her black lace dress and her chingling bangles and necklaces. She was showing a lot of faintly lined breast. “But I want to know about the nineteen-year-old. Would you just approach one on the bus?”

  “I don’t know when I’d take a bus.”

  “Well, see, you’d have to.”

  “I would ask Helia for one of hers.”

  “Helia. What do you mean, one of hers?”