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The water cooler went “Glug”
“No... no... the guy is dead!”
“Do they know what happened?”
“Debbie’s husband told her they’re pretty sure it’s a murder.”
“No shit. That’s something. Getting close to home.”
“I recognize that name, I saw that name up on the board didn’t I?”
“That Ryder guy had an appointment.”
“Lucky.”
“Bullshit. Ryder couldn’t sell him.”
“I bet he feels like shit.”
“You would too if you were dead.”
“No, I bet Ryder feels like shit.”
“I know I would.”
“I would have sold him.”
“I would have too.”
Glug
$$$
Tom sat on a stool at the bar down the street from the Consumer Life office. He was holding his third beer and that haunting phrase from his childhood rolled around in his head: never knew what hit him. Usually uttered as condolence. To Tom it seemed more terrifying. The worn-out rhetoric sparked in his brain and fired, ready to spill out, as if in some form of camaraderie around the water cooler, talking about someone else. “You always wonder about waking up one day not even knowing it’s your last day.” At least it was quick, they say. Never knew what hit him. These were not comfort words. The ones that waited, the ones that dragged out had time to know the fate that was due. The quick ones, the “lucky” ones had no notion of doom. Not only the morning of their last day, but right up to the very last second. For some reason, Tom thought of a close score in a hockey game where your team is sure to win. Yet there’s no one in the dark arena but you, and you are so sure of victory every minute that you are not even watching the game. All the same, that bulky shadow is skating down the ice leisurely, bearing down on an empty net. And then... wham... the clock says 00:00 and somehow, they scored on you. Should you have been in net? Or maybe just watched closer from where you were? So those words were more an omen when Tom heard them. Never knew what hit him. Meaning, that bulk is out there passing the puck back and forth without tiring and without hurrying. He skates when he’s ready whether you are paying attention or not. It will come for you, too. It will come for me, too. Just like it came for Joe. Like Tom came for Joe.
It was an accident. He welded this to his conscience. And while he was able to nearly convince himself, the weld marks were clearly visible. Even if Tom were able to absolve himself, others may not reach the same conclusion. Then, which version of the truth was stronger? Had he really done this thing? Had he killed a man? Him. Tom Ryder. Little Tommy Ryder who in the third grade still sucked his thumb. Little Tommy Titsucker, they called him. Which made him cry out of frustration. Not at being called a name, but from not understanding the link between the thumb and the tit. He sucked his fucking thumb, he thought (it still puzzled him, now) so why Tommy Tit-Sucker? Why not Tommy Thumb-Sucker...
“Tom?”
“Tit-Sucker!” Tom spat.
“I’m sorry?”
Tom realized there was someone addressing him. He went cold as though he were in his living room, watching TV and looked up through the living room window only to see someone standing there, staring at him. The man placed himself in the stool next to Tom. “Hello,” the man said.
“Hi.” Tom tried to look the good-looking officer in the eyes, yet his own felt so heavy and his neck did not feel strong enough to hold his head up, the grain of the bar so aesthetically appealing. “How are you?” he managed.
“How are you?” the big man said back to him. Not in a condescending way, but in a conspirator’s tone. Comrades in something.
“I’m OK,” Tom croaked.
“I have seen better days, too. I have seen worse, mind you.” He smiled at Tom. His hair was black from beneath his hat. Black leather jacket and dress pants replaced the RCMP uniform. If this was casual dress for the officer it had the opposite effect on Tom. Tom felt anything but casual. All he could see were gleaming teeth floating above a black swaying balloon. The smile floated to face an approaching waitress. “I’ll have a Kokanee and...” He pointed to Tom.
The waitress said proudly and quickly, “Quadrupled rum and Pepsi, tequila side and a Bud.” She turned away with the satisfaction of having remembered such an order and pinned it on Tom as though the empty glasses in front of him were not evidence enough.
“Been here long?” the man said as the waitress lay their order before them.
“Not long,” Tom lied. He sipped at his drink and felt his lips burn. The good-looking officer contemplated the label of his beer. “Thanks for the drink,” Tom added quickly, wondering if should have said drinks.
“No problem.” When the officer drank, Tom drank. Then lapsed into speculation whether the officer was subliminally making him drink, thereby easing him into doing and saying whatever the officer wanted to hear. He forced himself to drink at three, six, and eight-second respective intervals between the officer’s drinks. Which dawned on him was even more clever of the bastard.
“I know why you’re here,” the good-looking officer said. He was looking at himself in the mirrors behind the bar. Squinting his eyes a little, and glancing quickly up out of the corner of his eye at his profile.
“You do?”
“I was on highway patrol and we used to get these accident scenes...” he spread his arms to show a loss of words. He kept speaking, rendering his body language a lie. “I’ve been around. I’ve seen a lot of weird ones,” he said.
“Oh?”
“Sure. There was this one case where we had a body, obviously asphyxiated, but on what? Or by whom? Nothing in the autopsy, except that he drank some water before he died. Well, we analyzed the water and sure enough, it contained enough of his esophagus DNA for us to confirm that he had choked on an ice cube.”
“Holy shit!” Tom said. “I didn’t even know there was such a thing as esophagus DNA.”
“There might not be,” the officer said. “Can you imagine dying like that?”
Tom could not imagine. It would be awful. What would you do when realizing you were choking on an ice cube? Would you run to the toaster and stick your mouth over it? Run hot water down your throat? Or boiling water? Would you lose consciousness just after you had the capacity to think: “Why won’t that fucking thing melt?”
“So these things sort of haunt you, and you look for every little thing to help. You had a client die recently, right? Your client is probably haunting you.”
Tom thought of his client haunting him. He thought of ghosts. Rattling chains and gangly skeletons. Joe’s skeleton calling to him at night from the apartment above his. He thought of headless mannequins hanging from their necks.
“My point is, you tend to watch for things out of the ordinary. And sometimes they end up being so ordinary that you miss them. Like your name coming up while investigating this thing. Coincidence, I know, but I just go there every time, you know?” He smiled.
“I suppose,” Tom said.
“Of corpse you do.”
“What?” Tom jolted his head up, suddenly sober. Did he just say corpse?
“I said of course you do.” The smile. “It’s hard when someone dies suddenly, someone that you work with. You are drinking here tonight because you feel guilty.”
“Guilty?”
“What? No, I didn’t say guilty, I said pity. For the family.”
“Yes, of corpse,” Tom said.
“Hmm?”
“Of course.”
After a pause, the officer said, “It’s funny though, how we keep running into each other. Go fugitive.”
Go fugitive? That was a slip for go figure. A slip for sure, but not an obvious one. Not even a popular saying; why not go fish?
“And in my line of work it’s good to keep close to people who knew the deceased, even a little bit. I’m glad you and I are able to talk.” The good-looking officer smiled.
“I understand,” Tom said and sucked at an ice cube from his glass. He spit it out, alarmed at the hazards. “I’m not much of a conversationalist tonight, though.”
“It’s been that kind of night. You don’t have to talk. I respect that right to solitude.”
Tom felt sweat on the back of his neck. Did he just say you have the right to remain silent? Tom felt the insane drunken urge to run. To smash all the glasses on the counter as a diversion and then bolt out the door. Or hammer the officer over the head with a bar stool. Yet, what if he was misreading the situation? Was he just being paranoid? What if, after nailing the officer with the barstool, the man just stood there, hurt but not in the physical sense and, instead of arresting Tom, said: “what did you do that for?”
The officer gulped the rest of his beer and slid a business card in front of Tom. “If you think of anything you might remember, give me a con.”
Or: “Give me a call.”
“I will,” Tom said. “Thanks again for the drink.”
“No parole,” the officer said.
No problem? Tom looked up. The officer was looking into Tom’s eyes with a confusing mixture of humour and threat. “You heard me that time.” He left with a smile and Tom the bill.
$$$
After a few more drinks, there he was in the parking lot, fumbling with keys and then checking his wallet and cell phone. There he was pulling out of the pub with the windshield wipers on and the radio too fucking loud. Which to shut off first? And then peace after driving over the curb. Lights flowing over him were like seconds marking the passage of time before he was home. He took each off-ramp instinctively. As though he were in a river. Passing cars in and out like a fish struggling upstream. A salmon ready to spawn. He felt his member move thinking of Eddy waiting in bed. He would crawl in beside her warmth. He would pretend his fingers were tiny vehicles rolling over the hills of her thighs or shoulders. Speed bumps in certain streets became her ribs in his fantasy, making him go slow. Tracing his fingers down into her midsection, to her second set of ribs. She was so open then, so exposed and helpless. She would look into his eyes and he could really and truly see her face. And when he thought of crawling into her tonight, he imagined her sleepy face looking over at him in the dark. When did she start wearing glasses? And then, suddenly, no glasses. It was like a different chick, his member nudged him.
At home, there was the warmth of the lamp above the couch and the room was silent. In the dark kitchen he stumbled on boxes of cereal from the cupboards. He slipped on the cottage cheese and low-fat sour cream he liked on his potatoes. When he sat he was eye level with a neatly piled tower of weight loss milkshake boxes. Attached like a white flag of surrender was a note which read: “I am leaving you. You are an unsupportive fuck.” Then he remembered. She was gone. He hadn’t even bothered to remove her good-bye note.
Their closet confirmed it. Where her morose clothes used to cling to wire hangers, there was an empty space leaving, oddly, the exact amount of space for Tom’s wardrobe. So he stood there, like he knew he should, waiting for the feeling of rage or betrayal. What crossed his mind instantly was the cottage cheese. He thought she threw that out.