The Geranium Girls (13 page)

On Sunday evening Beryl went for a long walk, all the way over to Old St. Boniface. On her way up Provencher Boulevard she saw Wally entering a fried chicken joint. She considered catching up with him and then thought better of it. So what if he was related to Stan and Raylene? She didn’t like him and was pretty sure she never would. And anyway, she was trying to air out her head, get her thoughts in order, decide what to do next, if anything.

She walked all the way to Whittier Park, the site of Diane Caldwell’s murder. Strangled with a scarf, so Frank told Hermione. Both of the women. The killer had left the scarf behind on Diane, still tied around her throat. He had left nothing with Beatrice, but Frank said it had been done the same way with the same type of scarf. An old-lady scarf he called it. So Hermione said. They could tell by the fibres left in her neck. Not on her neck. In it.

Beryl shivered. What a horrible way to die. She wondered about the hooker from awhile back, whose murder was still unsolved, wondered if she, too, had been strangled with an old-lady scarf.

Some men were playing baseball in the park. Older guys, some with stomachs sticking out over their waist bands. They wore uniforms — very official looking. She recognized two of the men on the home team: Mort Kruck-Boulbria and Frank Foote. She watched for a little while. Frank saw her and waved. Mort didn’t appear to notice her.

As she walked back down Provencher she saw an ambulance outside the restaurant Wally had entered about an hour before. She’d heard the siren while she was watching the ball game. At least she assumed that was the siren she’d heard; lately there seemed to be sirens everywhere. The ambulance attendants weren’t hurrying. It must have been a false alarm, or maybe they were too late. They slammed the doors shut and drove off slowly, this time without the siren.

Beryl walked by Cuts Only. Hermione must have gone to bed. The only lights were the tiny white ones lighting up the side stairs. It still looked nice, but kind of empty with no geraniums hanging there.

The big clay pots were still out front. And the overflowing window boxes. It was quite dark, after ten by now, but Beryl was sure there was something not right about the plants. They had a wilted look to them. She felt the earth and it was fine; there was no way these plants were neglected. Maybe she was just imagining it. The flowers were still pretty, the leaves still a deep green, but no, they weren’t well. She knew it.

Well, if Herm was sleeping, Beryl certainly wasn’t going to wake her up with more bad news. She considered standing sentry outside her friend’s shop, or sitting sentry, at least till the sky began to lighten in the east.

But she had to be at work by six in the morning, just eight hours from now. And tomorrow was Monday, the worst. Her shoulders ached just thinking about it. She tried to cheer herself up with thoughts of her new double bag; it didn’t work.

He won’t kiss her. He comes so close; his lips almost touch her. And then he pulls away.

“Do you want me to?” he asks, dropping his cigarette butt into the empty wine bottle.

“Yes, please.”

He pushes her back onto the bed and works at her robe till she lies naked beneath him. His big hands move over her without touching.

“Please,” she says again.

He sinks his teeth into the soft skin of her throat.

She understands the danger, but at least he’s deigned to touch her.

Her hand finds his and he pulls away as if touched by a hot iron. Her blood is all he wants.

She woke up. Jesus. She closed her eyes and tried to picture that same guy, whoever he was, kissing her this time, touching her face. But she couldn’t manage it. Who was he? Who are these people in my dreams that I don’t recognize? she wondered.

Beryl groaned and tumbled off the couch. She had spent the night in the living room, after walking home from Hermione’s place.

Maybe Herm’s geraniums were fine. Maybe she just imagined what she saw, put her own wilted thoughts onto the plants.

She threw on her uniform and left the house walking, as usual, before the sun was up. That was the thing she hated the most about her job — getting up so painfully early, too early even for the bus. Even in summer the sun wasn’t up first for more than a few weeks. It couldn’t be healthy.

Not that she’d have known if the sun was up on this day. It was solid grey without a dint in the clouds to remind you that things could be different.

She stopped for coffee at Robin’s Donuts, where the only other customer was a dishevelled-looking man in blue clothes. A blue-collar worker stopping in on his way to the job. Just like her. Or maybe he was still on his way home from yesterday. Beryl felt afraid when she saw him out of the corner of her eye and sat as far away as possible at the other end of the shop.

The chair was cold and sticky against her thighs where her shorts ended. The morning was muggy but the coffee shop was icy cold. She faced the window and gazed out at the garbage and the empty sidewalk. The sky was pink in the east; the clouds had loosened up a little.

When the blue-clad man stood up to leave, Beryl turned and saw with a shock that it was Ed, her supervisor. He nodded at her as he walked by, but she couldn’t manage a response till after he had passed.

“Good morning,” she whispered, too late. He was gone.

How could I have not known that it was him? Beryl wondered, as she dug in her new bag for her glasses. This isn’t good at all. I should have sat with him even if neither of us wanted me to.

She found her glasses in one of the compartments in her bag. She was still getting used to it with all its Velcro and buckles. It was too shallow; things fell out all the time. She’d lost her newspaper twice so far and once she hadn’t found it again. It was just a matter of time before she lost someone’s mail and then she would be in trouble.

Ed had asked Beryl to make a short report on her new bag: its pros and cons, her general thoughts on it. She happily did so, mostly singing its praises, but mentioning the shallowness of its pouches as a definite drawback.

She sighed and got up to leave, wondering how she could have been so blind. It wasn’t that she hadn’t seen him. She had seen him, and thought he was a sinister labourer on his way to another place, or on his way home from another day.

She didn’t like the sense she’d had of him when she first walked into the coffee shop.

“It probably had more to do with me than him,” she said out loud as she cut through an empty parking lot and continued on to the post office. So much spooky stuff has been going on lately.

She decided to try to remember to put her glasses on in the morning before there was any chance of running into anyone. Wearing glasses was still quite new for her and she didn’t like it, didn’t like the feel of the hardware on her face.

Maybe I’ll treat myself this morning, she thought, stop at the cafeteria and grab myself a cinnamon bun. That was one thing that could be said for the post office: its cafeteria staff baked darn good sweet treats.

Boyo fancies himself an exceptional follower of people; they never seem to notice him. Sometimes he feels invisible. Maybe I’ll go to private detective school, he thinks, and hang out a shingle.

Following people gives him something to do that he really likes, a purpose. Imagine earning a living doing something so agreeable! It takes careful planning and he’s so good at that sort of thing. Boyo flushes with pleasure.

He follows Beryl Kyte all the time — ever since she found the woman in St. Vital Park — and she doesn’t have a clue. He’s taken an interest in her, but wonders if she’s simple. Like the cops. More likely, she’s just oblivious to what’s going on around her, like so many other people. Thinking girly thoughts, no doubt, about her hair and skin and weight.

Her skin and hair are distasteful: too white, too pale. She reminds him of something clammy that he can’t quite grasp, doesn’t want to grasp. She interests him, but he wouldn’t want to touch her.

It’s like with the hookers.

He used them to satisfy his needs. Sometimes he even fucked them. But he didn’t touch them with his fingers if he could manage it.

He hasn’t been to the Low Track for eighteen months. Nor has he used an escort service. For a long time he did one or the other at least six times a year.

Then three years ago he had a close call. They were in the back of his truck in a vacant lot off Higgins. The whore was new to him. She took the scarves in stride and said, “Whatever. I’m used to freaks.”

He didn’t liked that. He sat on her chest and felt her struggle, watched the terror in her eyes while he tightened the scarf around her neck.

“I should slice your head right off,” he whispered between his clenched teeth.

When her eyelids closed he panicked. He scrambled into the front seat of the truck and tore through the streets to the emergency room at the Health Sciences Centre. He carried her inside the main doors and dumped her. It was a Saturday night and the place was a madhouse; no one in authority even saw him. He took off home and locked his truck in the garage where he left it for a very long time. It wasn’t something he used often anyway.

The whore didn’t die. At least, he supposed she didn’t. It wasn’t in the paper. And no one ever came looking for him. That was another good thing about whores. They were a tight-lipped bunch.

But it scared him enough that he didn’t go back till eighteen months ago. When it all fell to pieces. Charise and her shaved cunt. Why’d she have to do it?

When Boyo sees Mail Girl Kyte pass through the employee entrance to the post office he eases himself off the little wall next to the library. Enough sitting around; he has places to be.

Beryl approached Ed’s desk after stopping by the cafeteria for a bun. He was just sliding into his chair.

“Good morning,” she said brightly.

“Hey, Beryl,” Ed said, glancing up from the mess of paper on his desk. He looked, not at her, but at the gooey bun clutched in her fist.

But that was normal for Ed. He looked the same as he always did and again Beryl wondered if she’d imagined the sinister aspect of his presence at the coffee shop. She was probably projecting, or whatever they call it, when you force your own fears and thoughts onto someone else. Like she had done with Hermione’s geraniums.

When Beryl got to her desk, Stan was sorting his mail, but there was something about the way he was doing it that gave her pause. He was usually a sorting machine, not even seeming to look at the letters as they flew from his hands into the case. This morning Stan was going slowly, examining each letter before he stuck it in its slot.

“You’ll never get out of here at that rate, Stan,” Beryl said, as she dragged his parcel bag over and deposited it at his feet. They took turns getting each other’s bags.

Beryl began sorting; she glanced over at him. “Is everything okay?”

Stan looked at her, but didn’t seem to hear. It was no wonder, with the conveyer belts roaring overhead. There was the screeching of a power saw this morning too, coming from the other side of the floor. And the constant high-pitched beep-beep of machinery backing up.

Beryl could taste the metal and the dust. Her hands were filthy, minutes after walking onto the sorting floor. She washed her hands so often they hurt. A layer of grimy dust seemed to coat her skin and clothing. The place was filthy; the bags that the mail went out in were filthy. And some of the workers were very strange.

Sorting mail, the indoor work, leaves plenty of space in the mind for all manner of thought: potent bubbles of imagination from countless sources mingled with the noise and the dirt.

The place seemed alive with danger to Beryl today. Anything could happen. Or more likely nothing. She didn’t know which would be worse.

“Is something wrong, Stan?” she asked again.

This time he heard her and said, “Yes. We received some bad news at our house last night. Oh. Thanks for bringing my bag over.”

Beryl stopped sorting and looked at him. Under the fluorescent lights his face was as white as a fish’s underbelly.

“Did somebody die?” she asked and had the horrible feeling that there had been another killing and that Stan and his family were connected to it in some way.

Please don’t let Stan be attached to a person who dies horribly, Beryl prayed. Please let all the deaths that he has to deal with be natural, happy deaths that take place at the right times.

“Yeah, somebody did die,” Stan said. “Wally. Wally Goately.”

“What?”

“Wally Goately died.”

“Jesus. I just saw him last night,” Beryl said. “He died?”

“Yes.”

“What…what did he die from?”

“He choked to death on a chicken bone. He was eating alone at a restaurant and nobody noticed that he was choking until it was all over. His face turned blue.”

Stan stopped sorting and looked at Beryl. “Where did you see him?”

“Oh God.” Beryl sat down on her crooked little stool. “I saw him before he died, before he went into the restaurant, just outside of it. I was going to speak to him and then I didn’t.” My fault.

“I had to go and identify him,” Stan said.

“Oh, Stan.” Beryl stood up and moved to where he was leaning against his desk. She peered into his stunned face.

“You should go home.”

“I can’t. We don’t get time off for distant cousins of wives,” Stan said and went back to his new slow way of sorting.

“So what? You should go home anyway. You had to identify him and that must have been horrible. Does Ed know?”

“No.”

Beryl turned abruptly and went to seek out her supervisor.

Ed said pretty much what Stan had said: You don’t get days off for your own cousins, let alone for your wife’s.

“Stan shouldn’t have to be here, Ed. He had to identify the guy. He had to look at his face.”

“Whose face?” Barry was glued to his computer, tapping keys.

“The guy’s face!” Beryl slammed her hand down on his desk.

“So what are you, Stan’s keeper?” Ed looked up from his work. “Can’t he speak for himself?”

“You know what, Ed? Fuck off!” Beryl said, and knew that she had done absolutely nothing good for Stan or for herself.

“I’m so sorry, Stan,” she said when she got back to her desk. She was shaking from having sworn at Ed. “How are Raylene and Ellie doing?” she asked. “They were both fond of Wally, weren’t they?”

“Yeah, Ellie, especially. He was her new favourite uncle. God knows why! He was pretty good at playing with her, I guess.”

“You should be home with them.”

“It’s okay. Raylene’s sisters are there. I’d just be in the way. Besides, it’s probably good if I get a chance to digest this awhile away from my family. I might be more good to them if I do.”

Stan was probably right. Beryl regretted having spoken to Ed and she knew she had said too much; it wasn’t her information to share.

Ed approached them then and gave Stan a soft punch on the shoulder. “You holdin’ up okay, Sport?” he asked and Beryl could feel her face turn red.

Stan looked at her in stunned surprise and said, “Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”

“I heard you got some bad news last night,” Ed said, also looking at Beryl.

“It’s no big deal.” Stan went back to his sorting.

Ed shuffled off and Stan called after him, “Ed!”

The supervisor turned around and Stan said, “Keep it under your hat, would ya?”

“Sure, Stan.” Ed looked at Beryl again.

She was trying to sort but was blinded by tears. I’m a busybody, she thought. Just like Gladys Kravitz on
Bewitched.
Stan will hate me now and I can’t bear it. Plus, I should have spoken to Wally last night. I should have sat with him while he ate and performed the Heimlich maneuvre when he started to choke. I could have done that.

“You shouldn’t have told Ed,” Stan said, barely sorting at all.

Tears streamed down Beryl’s face as she stumbled over to his desk. She opened her mouth to apologize, but all she could do was gulp.

“Beryl, what is it?” Stan asked, alarmed. “You barely knew Wally. In fact, you didn’t even like him. Did you?”

“I’m sorry, Stan. I’m sorry I told Ed. I thought he should let you go home.” Beryl swallowed another gulp and then hiccupped. “But it wasn’t my job to do that.”

Stan put his arm around her shoulder. It was the first time he had ever touched her.

“Beryl, it’s okay,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. Honest.”

“I’m sorry, Stan,” she said again. “I didn’t mean to make anything worse.”

“Seriously,” Stan said, “it’s not important.”

Beryl blew her nose and tidied herself up some and Stan went back to his sorting.

“It’s not so much that I have deep feelings for Wally,” he said philosophically. “I don’t. It’s just that it’s such a shock. So sudden, you know. One minute he’s here, irritating as can be, and the next he’s gone, all because of what he decided to have for supper.”