Chapter Twenty-Nine

When Hugo Howlett opened the door to his condo, he was confronted with the blank stares of two enormous woodland creatures. The shorter of the two was a grey beaver dressed in a yellow plaid vest and matching cap. The taller was a chocolate-coloured moose with antlers that barely cleared the door frame. It wore a green football jersey with a large M emblazoned across the front and a Pentax K1000 35 mm SLR around its neck.

“Oh, wow,” Howlett said, taking a step back. “It’s the Cucumber Club!”

A woman dressed as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark materialized beside him. “What’s the ‘Cucumber Club’?”

“You don’t know The Children’s Underground Club of United Moose and Beaver for Enthusiastic Reporters?”

The woman shook her enormous hairdo.

“From the show Cucumber? It was classic children’s programming. John Candy was on it. Martin Short. Jeff Healey.”

Elvira gave the two newcomers an unimpressed once-over, then disappeared back into the party.

“You guys look fantastic.”

Sporting a pale three-piece suit and a large bandage taped to his nose, Howlett was doing a solid impersonation of Jack Nicholson in Chinatown. “Who’s under there? Walter and Ezra?”

The animals shook their heavy heads.

“Frankie and Nico?”

Again, it was a no.

He grinned. “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

The Cucumber Club offered a collective shrug.

“I love it. Come on in and make yourself at home. There’s a bar set up just over there. Have a great time” — he winked — “whoever you are …”

They watched their host cross the living room to someone dressed as Where’s Waldo. Howlett gestured back toward them. Waldo looked and laughed.

Beaver slugged Moose’s shoulder and pointed at the red-and-white-striped adventurer. “That’s Ford Kelsey!” she said. “And — ohmygod — over there? Beetlejuice eating the canapé? That’s Yvonne Rogers. She got killed by a drunk driver in episode seven: ‘End of the Road’!”

“Okay, Meera,” Moose said. “Keep it together.”

“Sorry. It was a really emotional episode.”

Dame took a step forward into the party and got a sense of things: the polished hardwood beneath their feet, the sleek mid-century furniture in the living room, the yards of Calacatta marble in the kitchen. Every surface was suffused with the warm glow of money.

“So, what do we do now?” Meera asked.

“We look for Aki.”

The condo was stuffed with costumed revellers: Freddy Krueger worked his razor glove around a craft beer. A giant pizza was eating a tiny slider. For a moment, Dame thought the two men in white shirts and pink bow ties were dressed up as caterers, until she realized they actually were caterers. The music got louder. Conversations swelled and climaxed in bursts of laughter.

“There she is,” Dame said. “By the big painting.”

Standing alone in front of an enormous slab of abstract expressionism was a woman dressed in a gold-sequined coat and top hat. Rocky Horror’s Columbia.

“Looks like she’s behaving herself so far,” Dame said.

“Well, I’m dying under this thing. You want to get some air?”

“You go ahead. I’m going to snoop around a bit.”

“Okay. Just don’t get us thrown out before I can try those smoked salmon rolls.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Dame worked her way around the apartment feeling anonymous and avoidable in her ridiculous outfit. In her head she could hear Dodge pontificating: People keep their secrets in bedrooms and bathrooms. So, when the bathroom yielded nothing of interest but Rogaine and a Michelle Obama prayer candle, Dame moved on to the primary bedroom.

It was empty when she found it. She stepped inside and closed the door behind her. Low lit with bedside lamps, it was surprisingly large. A framed movie poster of Jules et Jim hung above a king-sized bed, and a deep, double-doored closet filed away tidy rows of shirts and sport coats. Outside the room’s floor-to-ceiling windows, the city sparkled like a handful of diamonds someone tossed off the balcony.

Dame hoisted the moose head and put it on the foot of the bed. She wiped a slick of forehead sweat on her fuzzy sleeve and opened the drawer of the nightstand. Watch, tie clips, a novel on the go — nothing out of the ordinary. When she opened its symmetrical mate, she discovered a stack of Sight & Sounds and a little zip-lock of weed.

Conversation flared up outside and Dame heard a hand on the knob. She dashed across to the closet and left the doors open a crack — just wide enough to see that she’d managed to forget the moose head on Howlett’s bedspread.

“Shit,” she whispered.

She was about to jump out and grab it, but the door swung open, and into the room walked Hugo Howlett and Ray Hobart’s wife.

From the closet, Dame watched as Aki closed the door against the noise of the party. Howlett put his drink down on the nightstand and picked up the moose mask. He sat down on the edge of his massive bed and arranged the thing in his lap so he could gaze into its vacant, googly eyes. “Looks like somebody lost their head.”

Dame tried to control her breathing. There was a wild jangling in her chest. She watched as Howlett carefully pulled the bandage off his nose and then dropped the moose head over his own. “How do I look?”

Aki laughed and sat down beside him. “Terrible. And you smell like wet dog.”

Howlett took the mask off and placed it on the bed. “I wonder if it’s the original. I mean, there can’t be much of a market for TVOntario Halloween costumes, right?”

“Probably not,” Aki said, taking off her sparkling top hat, “but I bet they could move a few hundred units of Casey and Finnegan.”

Howlett snapped his fingers. “Next year, I should go as Sam Crenshaw from Today’s Special. You could be Muffy Mouse.”

“No one would get it.” Her smile faded a little. “Have you … heard anything?”

Howlett shook his head and put his arm around Aki. “I’m sorry. No.”

Dame wasn’t exactly sure what was happening, but just to be safe, she brought her father’s camera up to her eye and found the two figures in its viewfinder. As she pushed the silver button, she hoped the dull thud of the party outside would mask the shutter’s click. When Aki put her head on Howlett’s shoulder, Dame advanced the film and took a second picture. When Howlett kissed the top of Aki’s head, Dame took a third.

“She’s not coming, is she?”

For an impossible moment, Dame thought they were talking about her.

“No. I don’t think so.”

Aki stood up and walked to the window. “You should probably get out there, you know. Make your big announcement.”

“It can wait a minute.” He fixed the bandage to his nose and then leaned back on the bed. “You know it wasn’t your fault, right? You were just a kid. You didn’t have any choice.”

Aki kept her eyes fixed on the window. “I know.”

“One of these days, Charlotte’s going to figure that out, too.”

“Maybe.” Aki cleared her throat. “Why don’t you go ahead? I’ll be right out.”

“You sure?” Howlett asked.

“Yeah. Just give me a minute.”

Howlett pushed himself off the bed and made his way out of the room. For a few seconds, Aki stood at the window, like she was waiting for someone out there. She turned and examined Dame’s ridiculous moose head, running a finger over its felt. Frowning, she looked around the room. Eventually, her eyes stopped on the closet door.

She started walking toward it, and Dame felt her guts turn to water.

“Hey!” An enormous grey beaver was standing at the bedroom’s entrance, her voice muffled under the costume. “I think Don Johnson or whoever is about to make a toast.”

“Who — who are you under there?” Aki asked.

The beaver cocked her head. “Who are any of us, really?”

Aki rolled her eyes. She fixed her top hat in place and walked out of the room.

Meera closed the door behind her. She took off the beaver head and held it under her arm. “You can come out now.”

The closet door creaked open. “Jesus. That was close. How did you know I was in here?”

“Well, I looked everywhere else for you. So, deduction? I guess?”

“Nice work, Sherlock.”

Meera smiled. “Find anything interesting?”

“Yeah, but we should probably amscray. I’ll tell you all about it once we get out of here.”

In the living room, Moose and Beaver could see that everyone was gathered around Howlett.

“… and I know,” he was saying, “that for a lot of you, the loss of Loyalist Collegiate was a real blow. But, I have some good news.”

Dame and Meera walked past, nice and easy, and paused at the door to listen.

“I’m happy to announce that — despite a few minor hurdles — the CBC has agreed to air eleven brand new episodes of School Colours featuring the original cast!”

The room erupted with cheers. Meera opened the door.

“Who’s directing?” someone shouted.

“When do we get to see a script?”

As the partygoers plied Howlett with questions, Dame took one last look around the room. Everyone was lit up and laughing with the possibility of real work. Everyone except Columbia from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, who once again stood alone, staring into her drink.