A week went by, a week of heavy homework and a major English essay on Wuthering Heights. Now there was a couple of strange ones, Cathy and Heathcliff, skulking around the windy moors under a brooding sky.
Raphaella turned up in English once, on Wednesday, but had slipped away after class before I could talk to her. I thought about her constantly, carried the ache around like a bulky package I was afraid to put down.
So that night I phoned her. The mother answered.
“It’s the bird guy,” she called out after I told her who I was. “Gannet.”
“I’m Garnet,” I corrected her hopelessly. “G-A-R —”
“Tell him you’re busy or something.”
“Hi, Raphaella. How are things?”
“Fine.”
“Let’s go to a movie tonight.”
“I can’t.”
“Don’t tell me. You have to wash your hair.”
My lame attempt at a joke fell flat.
“No, I’m just busy.”
“Tomorrow, then?”
“Sorry.”
“I’d really like to see you again.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Are you going with someone?”
“No.”
“Did I do something wrong?”
“No.”
Wow, this is going well, I thought.
“Well, let’s get together, then.”
“Look, I’m sorry. I have to go.”
“But —”
“Bye.”
She wasn’t in class next day or Friday. I began to wonder if she skipped off just to avoid me.
On Saturday morning a warm spring wind blustered up and down the sidewalk, rattling the budding branches of the trees along Mississauga Street. I opened up the store at the usual time, got my coffee from next door — I needed it; I had hardly slept — turned the “Open” sign to face the street and put Beethoven on the CD player. The showroom looked a little bare — the theatre people had come by and picked up the pieces Raphaella had chosen for the set of The Sound of Music or, as I thought of it, The Worst Musical Ever.
I was a little on edge about Raphaella rejecting me and my complete failure to come up with a clever stratagem that would win her heart, or at least get her to talk to me, so I decided not to work out back that day. I selected an old leather-bound gilt-edged book from the shelves along the wall, settled into a re-upholstered loveseat with my coffee at hand, put my feet up on a 150-year-old needlepointed ottoman and opened the book. It was Edgar Allan Poe, just the thing to cheer me up.
“For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief,” began “The Black Cat,” one of the few of his stories I hadn’t read. “Mad indeed would I be to expect it.” Great stuff, wild mystery, insanity, dark happenings. I sipped my coffee and slouched deeper into the soft seat.
The writing was gripping but I fell asleep anyway and sank into a nightmare. I was running through a night forest, panting with exhaustion and terror, pursued by a razor-clawed, slavering black cat with eyes like fire. Frantic, I pressed forward, but my legs wouldn’t work, as if I was running waist-deep through mud. Behind me bounded the cat, ready to leap, sink its claws into my back and pull me down before tearing my flesh with its teeth.
The ground fell away and I floated like a falling leaf, landing in a grassy field that hissed at my legs as I stumbled along through the dark toward a building that loomed ahead. I pushed open the door to escape the cat, slammed it behind me. Shaking, I curled up on the floor in the corner.
Then I heard voices. Angry voices, heavy with fear and loathing, the words running together like distant thunder.
Eighty wish.
Now!
Go back!
No, no!
Stones, stones!
A bell rang in the distance and the voices drifted away like mist.
I leapt from the loveseat, sending the book flying and upsetting the coffee, and stood trembling, blinking against the bright light in the window.
“Who’s there?” I demanded.
When my eyes adjusted I recognized Brad Summerhill, whose father ran one of the local weekly auctions. He was wearing his usual bush shirt, jeans and broken-down high-tops, and he carried a clipboard in his right hand.
“Got a delivery for you,” he said.
“Oh, okay,” I managed, my heart hammering. “What is it?”
“Bunch of stuff your old man snagged at the Maitland sale.”
“If you bring it around back to the usual place, that will be fine.”
“You got to help me unload, though. The price only covers delivery.”
Brad always carried a clipboard, always came through the front door rather than the back, always said the same thing.
“Sure, Brad. Glad to help.”
“Long as you know.”
“I know, Brad. I know.”