Lucy's Launderette

“Calm down,” said my mother.

“I am calm. Under the circumstances.”

My mother hummed under her breath as she searched. Her casualness unnerved me. “Yes, here they are. But I don’t know how useful they’re going to be. They’re a couple of years old.”

“Just give them to me. Quickly.”

“Don’t be rude, Lucille.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t help it. This whole business affects me that way.”

I could hear my mother sigh just before she began to read off the numbers. I scrawled them down and hung up.

I tried the first number on the list and got an answering machine. With panic in my voice, I left a very long message and hung up to wait. I was too edgy to do anything practical, so I got out a flannel rag and began to dust. Moving nervously around the empty gallery, I buffed frames, glass cases, pieces on pedestals, in short, the entire phalanx of phalluses. As I was rubbing away at an all-too-lifelike marble sculpture of one, a voice from behind me made me leap out of my skin.

“You do that with a practiced hand.”

“Paul…”

“In the flesh,” he grinned. He was looking very sharp in black jeans, black sweater, black leather jacket.

Oh God, I thought, don’t let Dirk come back this way dressed as Superman, not while he’s here.

“What can I do for you?” I asked.

“You can come and have a drink with me sometime.”

My heart did a double-flip. I didn’t want to seem too eager. “Just let me check my agenda,” I said, very smoothly. I didn’t have an agenda. I didn’t need one. My life wasn’t so hectic that I needed to write things down to remember them. I found an old address book in the bottom of my purse and flicked through it with an efficient air.

He said, “How about tonight? The Rain Room? Eight o’clock?”

For years I’d dreamt of someone asking me out to the Rain Room. No one ever had. Unfortunately, I had to take care of Dirk first and that could take time. “I can’t tonight. How about tomorrow. We’ll have to make it nine. I have another engagement tonight.”

“Fine. Tomorrow, then.” Tomorrow was Wednesday and I was free. He grinned again and was gone.

I sank into my chair. It had all happened so fast. I had a date for a drink, a real drink with the real Paul Bleeker. My next thought was, I have nothing to wear. My mental shopping spree was interrupted by the phone.

“Lucy Madison, please,” said a man’s voice. It was a deep voice, frayed with exhaustion.

“Speaking.”

“Sam Trelawny here. You left a message on my answering machine?”

“Hello, Mr. Trelawny. You must be new.”

“Why do you say that?” Sam Trelawny sounded harassed.

“Because I know everybody else. Or at least I used to.”

“I was transferred from North Van into the downtown area a few months ago.”

I said, “I’ll have to fill you in, I guess.”

“I have Dirk’s file in front of me.”

“He’s been away.”

“So I gather from the paperwork,” he said.

“Yeah. He was in Hawaii for a while.”

“Uh-huh? For how long?”

“About a year.”

“How did he manage that?”

I said, “I gather a lot of people there are in the same boat. Long-term tourists without green cards.”

“I see.”

“He was in California for a while before that.”

“Yes?”

“Yeah. He was hanging around on a street corner and some Moonies picked him up. They drove him back to their plantation or their ashram or whatever they call it. I guess after one evening with him, they didn’t want him anymore. They delivered him back to the street corner as quickly as possible. He got a free meal out of it, though. I imagine that was his idea all along. He can manage on shoestrings and earwax if he’s forced to.”

I heard a guffaw at the other end of the line, then silence.

“Are you still there, Mr. Trelawny?”

“Yeah. Some papers fell on the floor. Too smart for his own good, right?”

“That’s more or less the way it is. Are you going to see him?”

“It’s unfortunate, but there’s not a lot we can do at the moment, Miss Madison. You probably know how it goes. We have to wait for something to happen.”

“Just before he went to California, he started wearing a Burmese Wot on his head, this kind of colorful knit hat with a little peak, fluorescent colors actually. He took a suite at the Hotel Vancouver and enticed a seagull into the room. He said he was teaching it to walk in a straight line. He said he was sure the seagull was capable of learning but lazy and not committed to the goal. Needless to say, Dirk left without paying his bill.”

“And this was before he went to California and then Hawaii?”

“Just before. He must have skipped town the same day. Payday. You know, the government check?”

“Do I ever. It’s always a busy week.”

“Mr. Trelawny?”

“Yes, Miss Madison…I’m assuming it’s Miss?”