“Quite the first day, huh?”
“Ha. Yeah.”
“Sorry for that. Knew you could handle the weird stuff, but that was a new one.”
“I’m just sorry I wasn’t much help in there.”
Clay shook his head. “Without you, kid, I may not have made it to the hospital.”
He glanced over at Harper and squeezed her hand.
“Should I ask Kara to go in early tomorrow? Call the customers?”
Harper’s question took me off guard. The clock on the wall said it was eight fifteen, but it felt like I had been up for days. Still, with a rest I should be okay. The doctor who stitched my cut had said it was maybe a mild concussion. The use of the word maybe diminished the subsequent suggestion that I consider staying overnight. I wasn’t that big a fan of Jello and bare-backed gowns.
“Do you think she’d mind?” Kara was the office dispatcher, though to hear Clay describe her, she could do it all. I hadn’t even met her yet… tomorrow would be her first day back from vacation.
“She won’t mind at all.”
“Well, we’ll watch over things, don’t worry.” I looked in Clay’s eyes, and saw there was one other thing. Something that I had on my to-do list anyways. “And I’ll see what I can find out about the idiot who robbed us.”
“Not a good thing that he told us his name.”
I nodded. I’d had the same thought.
“I’ll be careful.”
Clay mouthed a thank you, though his eyes started to glaze again. The drugs must be kicking in — morphine or whatever was the painkiller du jour.
“Anyways, you need your rest. Harper, do you want me to call Kara, or-.”
“No, I’ll call her. She would want to hear from me about Clay. And I’ll touch base tomorrow, in case you have any questions.”
“Okay.” I patted Clay’s shoulder, but the older man was drifting off. “Take care.”
“You get some rest too, Darnell.” I winced at the use of my proper first name, something few people know. “If your mother hears we asked you to go back to work right away, why I-.”
“Don’t worry about my mother.” I could do that all by myself.
The lobby to the Lakeview was much like the rest of the place — gloomy, outdated, and with no view of Lake Ontario (or any other lake, for that matter). A leather couch and two chairs sat on one side of the unwelcoming entrance. On the other was a bulletin board crammed with posters and notes, and a bank of buzzers for visitors. “Elder” was listed across from the buzzer for Apartment 302.
I’d lived in the Lakeview for four years, since my Aunt Nicolette passed away. A branch manager at the local bank, Nicolette was my mom’s younger sister. She was also a regular volunteer, a member of a local choir, and a great sounding-board for my brother Ted and I. Though never married and without children of her own, Nicolette was like a second mother to us.
When she died, much of what she owned went to the two of us. The Lakeview condo, a ten year old silver Ford Taurus that Ted still drove, and most of the ninety grand in her savings accounts. The rest went to my mother.
Ted and I split the cash and shared the condo, though Ted kept his own apartment for the rare day when a woman consented to spend the evening with him. Most of my share of the cash was now in Clay’s hands, the first payment on my partnership stake in the business.
The mailbox was bunged up with the usual drivel, two pizza coupons and a Reader’s Digest “you’re a winner!” letter. I passed by the elevator — a death trap if there ever was one — and headed to the stairs. After a brief trudge up several flights, I entered the apartment to the sight of my brother flopped on the sofa, watching the Raptors on TV.
A Raptors forward missed on a drive down the lane. The Heat took down the rebound and launched their own fast break.
“What the hell happened to you? Mom called, yelling at me to keep you up all night, make sure you don’t have a concussion.”
“I’m fine. I’m going to sleep. Tell you about it tomorrow.”
Ted huffed, staggering to his feet. At six two and two hundred and twenty pounds, my little brother is a bigger, younger and paunchier version of me. The sofa moaned in audible relief.
“You had to get stitches?”
“Six.” I slipped out of my shoes and moved to the full-length mirror on the back of the front closet. “Dunno what it looks like.”
Peering into the mirror, I slowly pulled away the tape fixing a square of gauze to my temple.
“Ouch. That was from a punch?”
I leaned forward to inspect the cut. My temple looked like I’d tucked half a golfball under the skin, the flesh an angry red. About two inches long, the cut ran from just above my eyebrow to the hairline at my temple. The stitches zigzagged back and forth.
“Gun. He hit me with it.”
“Shit.” Ted’s big head loomed over his shoulder. “Still, looks like they did a good job.”
“You think so?”
“Absolutely. A few months, you’ll barely see anything. Like the cut on my lip, remember?”
I remembered. Grade Three. Four stitches from a split lip when Ted slipped on the monkey bars. He was right, you could barely see the scar anymore.
“Better than the butcher who did Chili’s knee. You see that mess?”
I was about to respond when the door to the apartment swung open and a woman blustered in.
Five foot four, wide of bust, hip and thigh, curls white as fresh-fallen snow. Where some mothers inspire warm feelings of adoration, my mother inspires one thing and one thing only.
Fear.
“He had a heart attack?”
I flinched. How my mother finds these things out, I will never know.
“Yes. But he’s OK. He’s over at Toronto General. I flagged a cab down and we were there in no time.”
“Does Harper know?”
“I waited for her to show. And I passed Willis on my way out.” Willis was Clay’s nephew.
“Poor Harper. I need to get over there and make sure she is alright.”
For a moment I thought I was going to escape any further harassment. No such luck.
“And you? You could not stop this thug?” It came out sounding like ‘dis tug’, her French Canadian accent butchering the “th” sound, one not used in her native language.
Ted snorted, and she went after him, her big purse swinging in an arc towards his head. I sighed and took a seat. This was what love looked like in the Elder family.
It was a short outburst, followed by her usual tour of the apartment, critiquing the state of disorder and the lack of nutritious food in the kitchen. Ted attempted to defend his precious Pop Tarts as a good source of a great many critical vitamins, which resulted in a look of disgust.
After her brief tour, she inspected my stitches.
“No girl will ever want you now.”
“Oh my God. Thanks.”
“Well, do you think I will live forever? I want to see my grandchildren before I die.”
There was no real answer to that one, so I sat quietly, tolerating her examination.
Finally, she turned away and began sifting through the mound of sundries on the hall table, a signal I had learned to interpret some time ago. I picked up her glasses from the kitchen table and handed them to her.
“I’ll get flowers on the way.” She perched the glasses in her hair, where she would no doubt forget them later in the evening.
“He’s going to be alright. The doctor said it was a small one, and they’ve got him on medication now.”
“What is a small one? The man had a heart attack on your first day of work! Now he may never work again. Mon dieu, si vous-.”
Nightmare. Now she was rambling in French, an accusatory tone in her voice. At the same time, her eyes were tearing up — the only sign of her true feelings.
“It’s okay. It’ll be okay. Go check on them at the hospital. Tell him I’m sorry.”
She stopped suddenly, staring at my lips. A quick turn and she was moving to the door, her leather bag/weapon over one shoulder and a silk scarf wrapped around her neck.