Daddy Lenin and Other Stories (20 page)

“I took you for French because of the book and because you look so European.”

Tony said, “Ah, my dress, my appearance. That is my father’s influence. He was very European, very correct.” He paused to leave the impression he was searching for a phrase. “
Old school
, I think the young people say. And this,” he explained, reaching out to give the homburg a fond pat,
“was my father’s. On certain days when I am very sentimental I wear it to honour the old gentleman’s memory.” Tony dropped his eyes to his wide-lapelled, pinstriped suit. “Responsibility for the rest is mine. My eccentric taste or calculated exhibitionism, who can say? Well, I have been thirty years in this country, but old habits die hard.” Was that speech over the top? Too much? She seemed to have swallowed his line.

“I think that’s charming,” she said, seating herself without an invitation. Tony found her openness, her
genuineness
appealing. And he could see that she was intrigued by him. That was flattering. He hadn’t intrigued anybody in a long time. She offered her hand and said, “Susan Breck.”

He took it. “Tonio Japp.” Where the hell had Tonio come from? He’d read
Tonio Kroger
once, long ago, maybe that was the source of it. He wasn’t sure how to categorize the look that passed over her face when he said the name. Amusement? Disdain? Did she find Tonio pretentious? Hurriedly he said, “But my friends call me Tony.”

“Tony it is.”

He asked if she would like something.

She said she had just dropped in for a quick cup of coffee.

He suggested she take a liqueur with it.

She conceded. “All right, you only live once,” she said and then began to explain to him why she had spoken to him in French. In a former life she had taught it in high school. “It’s lucky for me you didn’t answer in
la belle langue
,” she said gaily. “If you were a native speaker I wouldn’t have been able to keep up with you. Drumming French into teenagers’ heads all day long doesn’t do much to polish your own ability.”

She mentioned that she was just back from a wonderful holiday on the Mexican Riviera. An annual event. Each year she and a girlfriend went down there to escape the last gloomy, slushy days of winter. “At least it gives me a head start on my tan.” She coyly lifted the strap on her wristwatch, displaying a milk-white band of skin. Mickey Mouse stared at Tony from the face of the watch.

It was a relief that she was more intent on talking about herself than making inquiries about him. She enumerated interests: travel and movies, classes in watercolour painting and Latin dancing. Then she switched gears, turned a shrewd, appraising eye on Tony and asked him flat-out what he did.

He said he was retired.

“Retired from what?” she wanted to know.

This was tricky ground, details were likely to trip him up. “Life,” he said.

“Too bad for life,” Susan said. “So what brings you to Saskatoon, Tony? It can’t be business if you’re retired. And this place is hardly a hot tourist destination.”

He had to give her something, and once Tony started talking, things came spilling out of him that he wouldn’t ordinarily say, especially not to a total stranger. He thought his unusual behaviour was a consequence of the long winter, his almost complete isolation for months and months. Not another human being to talk to.

He told Susan that he was a widower. That he had recently moved from Toronto to live in the Qu’Appelle Valley. As he talked about his new home in Chernobyl, he found himself recasting it in a more favourable light for her. He painted a picturesque spot that he chosen to come to for the sole
purpose of measuring and reflecting on his life. A few pensive, sober touches to the newly christened Tonio Japp.

“But,” he said, “one needs an occasional break from all that. I get hungry for a little human company – even if it is the company of strangers.” He looked about the bistro. “A meal eaten surrounded by other voices, even if they are unfamiliar voices, can be pleasant enough.”

“Hey, I get that. I can see where you’re coming from. We’ve all been down that road one time or another. Seize the day.”

He wondered if Susan might be a divorcee. A widow would almost certainly not have been able to refrain from letting him know that she too was acquainted with grief and loneliness.

Tony ordered another round of drinks, sat back, and listened to her bright, cheery talk. Outside, the street was darkening. Cars streamed by, their headlights leading their occupants who knew where? A little after nine, Susan glanced at her watch, bent to gather her purse up from the floor. “Well, Tony,” she said, “this has been a slice, but I better be on my way. I get a bit nervous walking alone at night.”

“I left my car at the hotel,” Tony said. “Otherwise, I would offer you a lift. But if you feel anxious, permit me to call a cab and see you safely home.”

“No,” she said. “A cab would be silly. I live quite near here. Just downtown. It’s just that I stayed longer than I expected to.” She gave him a smile that he read as implying,
And it’s all your fault. You fascinating man
.

“I’m staying at The Bessborough. We could walk together.”

“You don’t mind?”

“Not in the least. A pleasure.”

Tony paid the bill and they set off. With the sun down there was a bite to the air. Susan had turned silent and looked lost in thought, although she walked purposefully and briskly. Maybe it was to dispel some tension she felt, but perhaps it was only to keep the chill at bay. When they had crossed over the river she halted at the foot of the bridge and announced that it wasn’t necessary for him to see her all the way home. It would only take her minutes to get there.

Tony wondered why her mood had changed in the course of a short walk. Did she suspect he had designs on her, was she worried that he might prove difficult to get rid of? “If you’re sure …”

“Absolutely.”

What anodyne
coup de grâce
to the evening would bring this awkwardness to an end? It was nice meeting you? I enjoyed our little talk? Tony adjusted the homburg and reminded himself that he was a gentleman from Mitteleuropa with a lifetime of sophisticated experience. “Might I invite you to join me for lunch in the next few days?” he said softly. “That is, if you are unattached.” He smiled in a way that he hoped would soften that last remark, which a woman of a certain age might find indelicately phrased.

Susan Breck cocked her head as if she had discovered some new, surprising angle from which to view him. She gave a hoot of laughter. “What a way to put it! If you mean am I attached to anyone at the hip – no, I’m not.”

“So,” he said, “perhaps lunch tomorrow?”

“I wouldn’t rule it out.” She started rummaging about in her purse. “Look, can I let you know when I’ve figured out
exactly what I’ve got on my plate for tomorrow? Give me your contact info and I’ll be in touch.” She handed a notepad to Tony, who took a few steps that brought him under the light shed by a street lamp. He wanted to make sure that whatever he printed would be perfectly legible, that Susan Breck would have no problem deciphering it.

When he returned the pad to her, he said hesitantly, “Maybe I should get your number …”

“No need,” she said brusquely. “I’ll be in touch. I promise not to keep you dangling.” There was a formidable, no-nonsense quality to her voice. Tony could imagine her laying down the law to her students back in her teaching days. That settled, Susan Breck left him, walking with an assurance and confidence that dismissed any suggestion that she found dark streets intimidating.

By eleven o’clock the next morning Tony was growing more and more annoyed he hadn’t heard from Susan. Her definition of what it meant to keep someone dangling wasn’t the same as his. Maybe she had only asked for his contact information so that she could dodge turning him down to his face. But at eleven-thirty his laptop timidly pinged, alerting him that he had an email. It was Susan announcing she could do lunch today. She recommended that they meet at an Italian trattoria near The Bessborough for which she provided the address. Tony fired off a reply. Yes.

Most of the trattoria’s patrons were clustered near the big front windows, basking in the spring sunshine, but Susan was seated at the very back of the restaurant in a dimly lit booth. He took her preference for a secluded nook as a promising sign. She was looking even more exotic and flashy than she had the night before: bright scarlet lipstick, mauve eyeshadow, heavy mascara, a turquoise choker and matching earrings, silver rings and bracelets worked in Mayan designs. The bracelets chimed brightly with every move she made and they chimed a lot because Susan was in high spirits. Everything she said was underlined and emphasized with reckless flourishes.

They had a leisurely lunch and killed a bottle of wine with it. Tony even coaxed her into joining him and taking a grappa with her coffee. By the time they left the trattoria, Susan’s vivacity had crossed the frontier into tipsiness. “With all that booze my afternoon’s shot,” she said, squinting against the sun.

They began to drift down the street.

“Well, we can find something else to do. Seeing you’re at loose ends.”

“
Unattached
, you mean.” Susan stood on tiptoe to give the crown of the homburg a sharp tap. “What’s going on under that
chapeau
? Let me guess.”

Tony grinned sheepishly.

They turned a corner and there was The Bessborough looming at the end of the block. Susan began to give Tony mischievous smacks to the behind with her hand-tooled Mexican purse. It was as if she were driving him towards the hotel. “What’s this,
Tonio
? What’re you cooking up,
Tonio
?” she demanded in a loud, challenging voice.

He had been cooking up nothing, not really. But hearing his name repeated in that taunting way made him feel ridiculous. What could be more ridiculous than a sixty-year-old man in a silly hat who somebody was swatting down the street as if he were some sulky, dawdling child? People were stopping to stare at them.

“Jesus, stop that,” he muttered and realized it was the first time his carefully practised accent had slipped.

Immediately, she parroted back at him, “Stop that. Stop that.
Stop that
.”

At least when they entered the lobby of the hotel she quit paddling his buttocks. As they rode up in the elevator, Susan propped herself against the back wall in a hip-slung streetwalker pose and curled her lips provocatively.

“Why are you looking at me that way?” Tony demanded. But he got no reply, except that the corners of her mouth went up a little more.

Sexual excitement and anticipation were leaving him choked and breathless. The lunchtime booze had given him a bit of a buzz. By the time he got the door of his room opened, Susan had fished a package of condoms out of her purse, which she tossed down on the bedside table like a calling card. She had come prepared. That gave a lift to Tony’s self-confidence, which the playful spanking had done a lot to undermine.

Susan went to the window, drew the curtains shut, switched off the light, and began to peel off her clothes efficiently, matter-of-factly.

In the half-light of the room, the areas of her body that had been protected from the Mexican sun by a swimsuit
gleamed white, breasts and abdomen and pudendum appearing to thrust themselves forward, demanding attention, her tanned face, arms, and legs receding, blending with the surrounding dimness. Naked, she appeared to be nothing but a practical assortment of sexual parts.

And that, it seemed, was what he was to Susan Breck. Tony Japp or Tonio Japp, whoever the hell he was now, clearly wasn’t
there
for her except to be brusquely instructed.
Do this, do that
. When she climaxed astride him, her orgasm registered itself in a series of quick muscle contractions that swept up from her thighs to her diaphragm. She toppled off him and lay absolutely still, then after a moment of lassitude swung her legs out of bed and said, “I’m going to clean up,” in the preoccupied voice of someone reminding herself that a chore needed doing.

Tony lay in bed listening to the white-noise hiss of the shower, which, combined with the wine and grappa, suddenly clutched him and dragged him down into sleep.

Tony opened his eyes, ran his hands over the sheets and his eyes around the room. He called “Susan?” several times, but there was no answer. She was gone. He would have liked it if she had stayed; her presence, any presence, would have been welcome after the dream he had just awoken from. In it, he and his wife were waiting to board a flight in a vast airport reminiscent of Heathrow. When Betty told him she was going to take a quick look around the duty-free shop, he merely nodded. She disappeared into the crowd of travellers, and as
she did, he glanced at his watch and was astonished to see that they had lost track of the time. It was only a few minutes before their gate would close. He stood up to call her back, but before a word left his mouth he suddenly found himself in the Qu’Appelle Valley on a fiercely windy day, whitecaps breaking on the beach.

Each time the waves slapped the sand, he grew more and more uneasy, sure that there was something he had forgotten to do, something besides keeping an eye on their departure time, something of the utmost importance. But for the life of him he couldn’t think what it was. He sensed it hovering behind him, back where Betty’s beloved cottage stood. But he couldn’t bring himself to turn and face it because if he did that, he would have to acknowledge the neglected presence.