Greedy Little Eyes (21 page)

Officer Mike, perhaps taking my silence for the embarrassment of the lonely, says, “Look, why don’t I just bring you a few things—Do you like Chinese?”

After the first time Ed made love with me, he lay stroking the slope of my temple and said, “I thought you were a rumour.”

It was our third date. The third date is, statistically, when most couples decide to have sex. No one will think any the worse of you for doing it then.

I didn’t know what he meant, but it sounded romantic. Being with Ed made me feel as though I were a rare and resplendent species.

I had refused my father’s attempts to get another exterminator to my apartment and he responded by having his secretary phone each of his seven units to discuss pest control. No one else had seen a mouse or evidence of such. They did not want fumigation. They did not want pest poison in their homes.

I maintained my position that the mouse was a loner, that she had no friends or family and there was nothing further to worry about as we had set her free in Stanley Park.

“Who’s
we
?” he demanded.

By our third week (and twelfth date), Ed had an inkling that my father did not approve. Perhaps it was the return of Ed’s Whoville Critter Control bill with
N/A
scrawled across the face of it and an attached letter reading, in part, “Conclude all transactions through this office. Do not contact site of infestation.”

By the fourth week, Ed had moved in. I insisted. Out of both love and necessity. Two months before, he had seen a news story on television about an eighty-two-year-old woman robbed at knifepoint, her wheelchair stolen. Her family had no money and she would be on a lengthy wait list for a government-subsidized chair. The story made Ed cry. His grandmother had raised him from the age of twelve until she died when he was seventeen. Unable to bear the thought of the woman on television housebound, he called the news station and sent her his rent money as well as money for his electricity, phone and cable.

Ed was eating popcorn for dinner, staring at his eviction notice, when the lights went out. He called to ask if he could spend the night just before his line went dead.

That night, he came to me with a suitcase, games of Boggle and Whodunit, and all his DVDs including
A Charlie Brown Christmas, A Year Without a Santa Claus
and
Rudolph
,
the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
We spent the warmest night of the year watching yuletide specials. I loved Ed more than words.

Officer Mike opens all the Chinese takeout boxes. He spoons out servings of chow mein, egg foo young and chop suey onto our plates, then tops it off with an egg roll each. He hands me a napkin and offers me a choice of chopsticks or fork. I choose sticks; Chinese food tastes peculiar from a fork.

As we eat, flashes of Officer Mike in the library come to mind—arms open and extended, bent as though waiting for a small child. I know now why he struck me that way. Being such a large man, he stoops slightly when walking through door frames. He looks as though he feels guilty for taking up space.

When we finish eating, Officer Mike brings our plates to the kitchen and stops to look up at the burnt-out lights inches above his head. Two out of the three bulbs are dead. Dimness has offered a certain comfort lately.

He frowns and asks if I would like him to change them while he’s here. I think of the Abominable Snowman in Ed’s copy of
Rudolph
,
the Red-Nosed Reindeer
, monstrous and bumbling, but his incredible size makes him the perfect candidate to place shining gold stars atop Christmas trees. I go into my cupboard and find replacement bulbs, stand outside the kitchen and watch him make the changes. No chair necessary.

The phone rings. I keep my gaze on his hands as they twist and secure all they touch.

He glances. “You’re not going to answer that?”

“I imagine it’s my father.”

The ringing stops for two or three moments and resumes.

“Would you like me to answer? No point making your family worry.”

“I don’t make them.”

“Do they know what happened?”

“Did you tell them?” Something about the sheer bulk of Officer Mike, the bulbs, the phone, tilt up the corners of my mouth.

The ringing stops. Officer Mike and I look at each other and he says, “Is there anything else I can do for you? Could I take you for a walk? Many victims don’t feel safe to go out alone after—” and he stops because I am very near him now.

Holding his wrist, I carefully unbutton his cuff, slowly push up the sleeve, and ask if I can see his wound.

He stands calm as a horse allowing his shoe to be checked. “It’s nothing. Seemed like a reflex the way he stuck me with it. Doesn’t hurt much.”

I trace the surgical tape with my fingertip. “You’re able to use it?” And I stare up into his brown-sugar eyes the way I did three days ago. I have the strangest urge to be lifted, raised to the ceiling. Officer Mike stares back then, nods and bends, picks me up. He stands with me that way a few moments. I’m high enough to feel the warmth of new bulbs on my face.

Carrying me down the hall, his head bowed, he murmurs, “Whatever I can do for you.”

In the fifth week, Ed sat me on the couch and knelt at my feet. “I have no money and I know I have to do something about that.” He took his cellphone from his pocket and placed it on the coffee table. He hadn’t had another mouse call since we met. “But in the meantime, until we get some, I have a promise ring for you.” From his jacket, he took a small yellow cube he’d fashioned from a Tim Hortons doughnut box. Inside the cube was a Timbit, a doughnut hole that had been tunnelled through. He held my hand, took the sugary ball from its box and pushed the doughnut onto my finger. “With this ring, I thee wed.”

I grinned at him. “I thought you said it was a promise ring.”

“It is. I’m wedded to the promise of marrying you. Now seal it.” He held my ringed finger between us, until we each parted our jaws and took a bite.

In the sixth week: “Do you mean to tell me you’ve got that horse’s ass living with you? In the apartment?”

“I’ll thank you to refrain from calling Ed a horse’s ass,” I whispered into the phone. Ed was in the bedroom still sleeping. “And it is
my
apartment.”

“
Your
apartment?” My father laughed a little too long, a little too loud. “You are living under my roof and you’ll do so alone until such time as you marry and become someone else’s problem.”

“For your edification,
Father,
Ed just asked me to marry him.”

Another of those horrible laughs. “Don’t be ridiculous. Have him out by the end of the week.” He hung up.

I lowered the receiver and turned to see Ed, not in the bedroom, but standing close by, looking rumpled and defeated.

“My dad used to call me a horse’s ass too.” He looked at the floor. “You’re a horse’s ass!” he hollered suddenly. He looked up but his eyes darted away. “I guess it’s unanimous.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No!” I explained to him that my father had never seen me in love, and suggested that perhaps he was jealous. I had read about that sort of thing.

Nevertheless, that is when Ed changed. It was as if something dark and tar-stiff filled his being and I didn’t know how to shine light on him.

He fell asleep on the couch that night and didn’t come to bed. He did the same the next night. On the third night, I thought I heard the bedroom door squeak and I turned over, hoping to see him. The room was dark and shadowy. He wasn’t there, and yet I felt him. I sat up, still dozy and thick-headed. I wondered if I had been dreaming of Ed, craving him. Perhaps it was just the last bits of dream haunting me.

I wondered if he was awake too and I leaned forward to see around my dresser, see if he might be out in the hall. On the floor, on the other side of the dresser, a dark figure hunched. I strained to see through the darkness and then suddenly it moved—raised its head. I shrieked and scrambled back against the wall.

“It’s me, it’s just me!” Ed said as he jumped up. “I’m sorry!”

“What were you doing down there?”

“Listening to you breathe.” He sat on the edge of the bed.

I dropped my head against his arm. “Why are you doing this? Please come to bed.”

He set me back from him and said, “You don’t know who I am. You don’t know who you are.”

I tried to touch his face.

Ed gently put my hand back on the blanket. “Do you know what a horse’s ass is? A screw-up—useless, aim-less—I’m a horse’s ass.” He got up and left the room, closing the door behind him.

That morning as I swallowed back tears and readied myself for work, Ed dressed himself too: black Levi’s, black shirt, black tie, and an old black blazer. His face was stony. I asked if he’d be home for dinner and offered to make us piggies-in-blankets.

He walked out the door.

He wasn’t there when I came home from the library and it felt bad in my apartment. It felt like
the
apartment. Turning every light on, I tried to feel warm. Curled up on the couch, I didn’t move until I heard the sound of his key in the lock the next morning.

Ed came into the living room, long limbs looking skeletal. He stood over me. His tie hung like a noose and his chest jumped a little under his shirt.

I sat up. “I miss you,” I said.

“You shouldn’t.” It looked as though he hadn’t slept either.

I thought of an article I’d read once in
Mademoiselle
magazine. Among the tips for weeding out Mr. Wrong: “If a man says he’s not good enough for you, believe him.”

Ed sat on the coffee table. “My dad died.”

“Oh god. Ed. When?”

“Five years ago. I never went to the funeral. I went to see my aunt yesterday and we had a little memorial service. Sometimes I think I wasn’t weaned properly. You know? You must. You and I are so opposite, we’re the same.”

Ed told me that we weren’t doing each other any good. He couldn’t speak for me, he said, but he was going to have to grab his life by the ankles and shake it upside down. “I need a program.”

The next day he showed up at the library. Who knows how long he’d been standing in the entrance when I saw him. I was busy with a lineup of checkouts, but I did look up and wave. He gave me a nervous smile and then poked a number into his cellphone. He talked for just a few seconds before sticking the phone back in his pocket and striding to the front of the line.

“Where is my mouse money?” He sounded sarcastic. I had just scanned someone’s card and Ed snapped it from my fingers. “Jesus Christ,” he barked at the card’s owner. “Don’t let her do that.”

The young woman reached for her library card with a mixture of bemusement and fear.

I decided to laugh. I told her that Ed was being silly.

That’s when Ed pulled the knife, stabbed it into the
counter and said, “How’s this for silly?” He threw his arm against the woman in the manner of a driver protecting his passenger during a sudden stop. She jumped back and the rest of the line scattered and cried out. There were only women in the library and none wanted to play hero.

Ed squinted at me. “Think you’re pretty smart? Tell them who you work for, bitch!”