Viaticum Page 3

  Quickly, Uncle Buck hefted the satchel back over his shoulder. He fixed Matt with his glittering eyes and whispered, “It’s a house of cards, man. It’s all a fucking house of cards,” with that same malicious awareness, then his eyes darted about again, settling briefly on the main entrance where several of the black-clad servers were speaking urgently to a burly oriental man with a buzz cut and head-set. “Gotta run,” Uncle Buck concluded, winking at Matt before taking off, weaving in and out of the dark clusters of happy realtors as the burly manager straight-lined the buffet, arcing and ducking and coming in behind the tables until he at last made the entrance and was gone into a slip of grey light that came in from the lobby.

  Then the manager was there, standing next to Matt, red-faced and huffing. “Did you see him? Did you see where he went?”

  Matt pointed to the door, feeling ashamed and absurd all at once. “He got out. I saw him go.”

  The manager shook his head. There were beads of sweat on his scalp, clinging between the thin spiky hairs. Two dark, wet patches were forming under the arms of his burgundy shirt. “Poachers,” he said grimly, talking to Matt but looking towards the door. “This group of street punks. One of them gets a suit and then they’re in here after a free lunch . . .” He looked at Matt directly now, his face suddenly open and searching, like a small child looking for approval. “It’s impossible to police the door every second with this many people, you know what I mean?”

  Matt said he did know and that it must be tough and that they were doing a great job, then he watched the manager lumber off, just a kid really, despite his position, just a regular guy who was worried, like the rest of them, that he was doing everything wrong.

  Matt stood, alone again, still beside the buffet, pondering this latest humiliation, his own inaction, his lack of social acuity, all of it. He felt deflated, the false glimmer of determination with which he’d begun the day utterly gone. He took one last look around the ballroom, then walked out through the main doors and into the lobby.

  He intended to go home. He went down to the parking garage, got in his car and drove out into the downtown core where the canyons between the buildings were already filling with shadow, then he continued northwards, away from the city, the towering glass of the skyscrapers behind him glazed dull grey in the colourless October afternoon. Already, his thoughts were reaching towards Jen and Jacob, reaching like a drowning man for home, for the simplicity of warmth, for Jacob’s sidelong press against him when he read him bedtime stories; for Jen, Jen in the early morning before she remembered her grievances against him, sliding across the cool sheets to press her sleepy, warm body into his back. Yes, he intended to go home to his family.

  He exited onto the viaduct, a great concrete tentacle that curled down under the Interstate before it ramped back up onto the other side and in the roaring gloom under the highway he saw sleeping bags and shopping bags and pillows tucked in the crook where the concrete retaining wall met the road above. Uncle Buck was suddenly in his mind again. A house of cards. A house of fucking cards, he’d whispered. Matt couldn’t get it out of his head.

  Now he merged up onto the Interstate and joined the lines of traffic that were snaking northwards, the red taillights ahead of him sparking along the grey ribbon of the road, the whole procession stopping and starting mindlessly like one of those Chinese dragons in the New Year’s Parade he’d gone to with Jacob. Eventually, the traffic loosened, and he passed the lake, its moody surface scuffed by the wind, then he exited the highway and after a series of stoplights and turns, he was back in his own subdivision: Sandy Hills.

  Usually he felt a twinge of pride when he entered Sandy Hills, yet on this day the great brick sign with its nostalgic cursive lettering irritated him. It was too big, too pretentious somehow. There were no hills in Sandy Hills, no sand, just a series of empty lots still for sale and street upon street of sprawling brick and beige houses.

  He slowed the car to a crawl. Most of the houses were empty at this hour and their darkened windows took up his reflection, passing it from house to house, like a secret. Suddenly he wasn’t sure if he even wanted to go home. Not yet. He felt strange, guilty somehow, though he hadn’t really done anything.

  The car growled along, creeping slowly past the same houses he drove by every day; yet somehow it all seemed strange to him, as if he were seeing it for the first time. Now, as he drove, the signs began to jump out at him. They’d been there before, but somehow, he’d failed to notice how many of them there actually were. For sale in bold red. Reduced in screaming fluorescence and now here was one that was different, one that had changed overnight: Foreclosed in solemn black, the seal of doom.

  At the conference, they kept saying that Seattle would be saved by foreign investment, that what was happening in the rest of the country couldn’t happen here, yet he no longer felt persuaded. The fact was, his listings simply weren’t moving. Maybe he wasn’t productive all the time, maybe he wasn’t Sandy Togliatti, but there were only so many cold calls he could make, only so many open houses he could host. And the signs. He wasn’t imagining the signs. They were everywhere.

  He pulled over to the side of the road. He foresaw a fight with Jen if he went back now. She’d wonder why he was home early and then what would he say? That he’d just left the conference? That he’d felt too anxious and ashamed? That he’d been humiliated by a street kid stealing sandwiches? He didn’t know what he’d say. He sat with the engine idling, staring at his own house up the street, its steeply angled roof slashed onto the ­darkening clouds above. It was strange to look at it from this perspective. He felt removed from it somehow, like a spy on his own life, and as he sat there looking at the house with its brick entranceway, its great bay windows dominating the front, its curving flagstone drive and double car garage and all the bells and whistles that were meant to increase the resale value but were, in fact, exactly the same as every other house on the street, as he sat there looking at it, his face began to burn.

  His plan had been to flip it. Do some renos, then make a chunk of cash on the turnover. He knew people who made their living that way, colleagues who’d made 60, 70 grand, a 100 even on the resale of their homes. He’d been confident then, still vain enough to believe his initial success at the real estate game had something to do with talent. It made him squirm to think of it now . . . how they’d encouraged him, his mother and Jen’s ­parents congratulating him as if he’d surmounted some great pinnacle of adulthood and was finally taking responsibility, treating the whole purchase like it was some sort of cathartic surrender to the obligations of manhood or fatherhood or husbandhood or what the fuck ever, he didn’t even know.

  Suddenly, he jammed his foot down on the gas and cut the wheel so that his tires screamed against the pale dead asphalt. Fuck it, he said. The car accelerated recklessly, and he made the loop of the cul-de-sac without braking, his stomach lurching as the car was sucked sideways. Part of him wanted Jen to look out the window and see him . . . part of him wanted some housewife to report him to the neighbourhood watch, to come out on the porch and yell at him so he could get out of the car and tell her exactly what he thought of it all, what he actually felt for once. Fuck it, he said again, then pretended he didn’t know where he was going.

  When he got to the mall his rage had subsided and he felt kind of sad but didn’t consider turning back. He could feel the anticipation of the burn already tingling in his toes as he stepped out into the parking lot. Somehow it didn’t feel like he was ­making a choice. It felt as if the choice had already been made some time ago and this was just the fact of it making itself known, the sad simple fact of it sliding to its consequence.

  He remembered the day after Jacob was born. He’d left the hospital early in the morning when Jen and their newborn son were still asleep, and he’d gone down to the shoreline where he sat on a log looking out at the sparkling waters of Puget Sound. The sun had come up over the hill and
its warm, yellow light crept down the sides of the buildings behind him then out onto the sand and into the water, so he could see the rocks and the sand underneath. It was a warm spring morning and he’d been full of wonder at the strength of the new, unexpected love in his chest for his son, for Jen despite their troubles, for the day, the shapes of the islands blue on blue out in the Juan de Fuca Strait, the white of the boats, the gleaming, brilliant city. Everything had seemed so exquisitely beautiful and new that tears had sprung to his eyes and he’d found himself whispering please, please, please though he didn’t know why or to whom, then he’d sat on the log and made promises, he’d made rules for himself to follow so that the feeling of that day might stay with him always. He hadn’t touched a drink since.

  He thought about this even as he entered the mall. He walked through the anonymous twilight of the tiled avenue, passed winking storefronts and other shoppers to a bar called the Elephant Castle, remembering the rules and the promises with a kind of sadness and regret.

  The bar was dark and quiet, tucked away from the prying eyes of the day, from the rush and the busy, everyone so goddamn busy.

  I’m a grown man, he reminded himself and it’s only a drink.

  He took a seat at the bar and ordered a whisky from a tired looking bartender, a man his own age with heavy circles under his eyes. He watched the bartender’s hands on the glasses, the ice scoop, the bottle. He could feel the cold in his own hands as he watched, and this calmed him.

  The bartender slid the drink wordlessly across. Matt nodded and was glad for the man’s silence.

  He brought the glass up to his lips and sucked the whisky over his teeth then held the burn, the blessed, blessed burn against the roof of his mouth where it prickled and spread like sunshine through the trees and he thought that he might get there, to that brightness in between, then his phone rang, and he answered it.

  “Matty? Matty Campbell? Is it really you?”

  He froze. He stared down into his drink as if it had spoken. Its slick golden glow winked back, and he wondered briefly if he’d somehow conjured it for if whisky had a voice, if surreptitious afternoon boozing had a voice, this would surely be it. He closed his eyes and for some reason he found himself thinking of his father, the old man sitting outside the RV with the ice cubes clicking in his glass, he thought of a great river carved deep into the surface of the Earth, an ancient river winding silently through the desert, its surface brown and opaque and unfathomable. Then he shook himself free and said, “Ken! Well holy shit. I can’t believe you’re calling. What’s it been now? Twenty years?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The morning after her diagnosis, Annika woke at the regular time, ate her breakfast and got ready to go to work. She put on her coat, locked her door, then walked down the hall and out into the parking lot where the morning sky was just beginning to pale. The spindly birch trees that lined the lot were silhouetted against the sky’s brightening, their naked limbs begging upwards, their fallen leaves scattered across the cold, grey pavement like yellow teardrops, strangely delicate as they lifted and swirled in the unsettled air. In a few weeks they’d be lumped in rotting piles along the curb, she knew, wet mats that smelled of worms and decay, but the winter rains hadn’t started yet. It had been warm and sunny for most of autumn and then suddenly cold, the weather changing almost overnight, the way a person can change, just like that.

  Annika shivered and hugged her coat close around her. People here talked as if the lack of snow made Seattle winters gentle but there was an unpredictability to the West Coast, a changeability from day to day that struck her as brutal. She would have preferred the long, slow turn of the seasons followed by snowfall and steady cold the way she remembered things as a child.

  She made her way across the lot then let herself into her little hatchback, piled her purse and lunch onto the passenger seat, then turned on the heat. Cold bled up from the steering wheel and into her fingers as she sat watching a thin spider web of frost melt away from the windshield. Her hands on the wheel looked old, thin and corded with the veins protruding. They looked like someone else’s hands.

  When the frost was gone, she backed the car out and exited onto the street where each turn brought her into a greater flow of traffic. It was only 8:00 but it was already busy on the Interstate, all four lanes rushing, the red tail lights on the road ahead moving not as separate points but in waves, like sheets of rainwater running down asphalt. Everyone was on their way to work, just as before. There were times when the morning rush made Annika feel like she was part of something larger, that she was part of the life of the city, but mostly it still felt strange to her, having spent the majority of her life driving dirt roads and two-lane highways.

  After twenty minutes on the Interstate, she took the Northlands exit to where traffic narrowed, then stopped, then flowed into the main avenue of the industrial park, a warren of flat, low buildings with wide empty lots in front of them. She passed a Safeway and a Walgreens and an Office Supply store, then she turned again into a maze of non-descript businesses and storage rental units.

  Lifeline Insurance was a low, modern looking building with a front wall of mirrored glass that reflected an anonymous landscape of manicured shrubs and grey asphalt. Annika parked her car, gathered her things and got out. She stood still for a moment, feeling the cold air against her skin; it had an acrid taste, like blood and winter.

  She shook her head and started across the parking lot, her shoes clipping smartly on the pavement as she walked. Sometimes, when she walked in heels, she found herself looking over her shoulder to see who was behind her only to realize that the sound, that hollow, polished sound, was her own footfall. Now, as she listened to the click of her cheap, too-tight shoes, she felt her anger stir against Hamish. Above her, a swollen underbelly of cloud was darkening by the minute and she thought bitterly that Hamish had stolen the sky; he had taken the sky and the wind and the sun away from her and there were nights that no one knew about, dreary, rainy nights when she lay curled on the floor of her apartment whispering you thief, you thief, you thief even though she knew in her logical mind that it didn’t make sense. Hamish hadn’t forced her to move to Seattle, she reminded herself. He hadn’t forced her to do anything.

  She stopped at the front door of the building, breathing deeply until her anger stilled inside her, then she opened the door and clipped along the foyer, letting herself into the main office where a group of her co-workers were standing by the coffee ­station. Susan said, “Hello, Annika,” and John said, “Good morning, Annika,” and Ray said, “Annika Bo Bannika, what’s shakin’?” and she smiled and said hello and commented on the cold. She felt strange, distant. Everything seemed vivid and portentous yet untouchable also, like she was a deep-sea diver trapped in a glass bubble, looking out at her own life. She couldn’t decipher if this strangeness was the illness or her fear. She hoped, she wanted it to be fear.

  The office was a long, rectangular room that was divided into smaller sections by moveable partitions that reached only partway to the ceiling so when people were standing you could see the tops of their heads; when they were walking you could see the heads gliding along. Annika made her way to her desk at the far end of the room, the grey light from the windows on one side, the island of cubicles on the other. Already the air was full of sounds: tapping fingers, the whirring of the copier, the buzz of fluorescent lights.

  When she arrived at her cubicle, she hung up her coat, put her lunch on the desk then turned on her computer. She put on her headset, checked the messages on the phone, then answered all the email enquiries that had piled up overnight. Once she’d dealt with the backlog, she began to process new applications, entering data from the mail-in forms into the database where it could be further vetted by claims.

  Throughout the day, Annika fielded calls from clients who had questions about their life insurance policies. The majority of them wanted to know what would
happen if. What if they died in a storm or a flood or an Earthquake? Would they be covered? What if they were attacked by an animal? Or a terrorist? What about a car accident where it was their fault? Suicide? What if their husband died and hadn’t made out his will yet?

  She’d always just followed protocol, quoting verbatim the FAQ sheet without much thought to the lives or the fears behind the questions, for she’d only ever considered the job as temporary. It had simply been a way to get some work experience in the city, then, after that, a way to save money after the divorce so she could get back on her feet again. Yet on this day, the questions felt different, full of foreboding and personal somehow. Annika could hear the fear and the need behind them and she found herself wanting to explain that she didn’t actually know the answers, that the future was uncertain and that life was full of cruel surprises. Instead she said, yes, you’re covered or no, you’re not or for an extra $15 a month I can add coverage for surfing, or no, we don’t actually cover medical.

  Shortly after lunch, an elderly woman called. “So how does it work?” the woman slurred. Annika could hear her labored breathing as if the woman were sitting right there beside her, whispering in her ear. She could smell the loneliness and liquor through the telephone.

  “Pardon? I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “How does it work? What will happen when I die?” Not if. The woman didn’t ask if the way most people did. She said when.

  Annika looked out the gap in the partitions to the parking lot and the restless stream of cars beyond it. “Your policy will go to the beneficiary you named in your will,” she said. There was an ugliness, a meanness in the woman’s voice that frightened her.

  “But how will they know?”