Plots Read online

  “Paradise? Is that the name of your cottage?”

  “Yeah, only it’s like a pair of dice.” I said it slowly so she would get it.

  “Is someone a gambler?”

  I shook my head. “No, nothing like that, someone way back when thought it was cute.” That someone was me, but I wasn’t going to admit it. “Do you think Doug will let you off for the week?”

  “Oh, he will. I’ve already hinted around it for the past pay period. It’s a bit much, you know, working for weeks and weeks without a day off.”

  “You deserve it! There are lots of bedrooms and I would love the company.”

  “You’ve said ‘lots of bedrooms’ twice now. I get it. I don’t get to sleep with you.”

  Cindy and I had a running joke about how she was desperate to get in my pants. I didn’t bother to reply. She lifted a corner of her mouth. “Okay, okay. I’ll go ask him now.”

  “No, wait. Lady Hay Hair is in there with him.”

  Suddenly, his door whooshed open and Shirley swished out, her hair looking like a startled hedge hog, her cheeks on fire. She was straightening her hot, shiny, blazing blue blouse. She smoked by my desk. “Don’t forget. Fire-retardant sprays on my desk before you go.”

  I wondered if she knew what she’d said given how hot she was. Probably not. But then, you never knew. She looked like a bimbo, but she was a pretty smart boss. Looks were so deceiving. Did I hear her laughing as she shut her office door? Yes, she got it. Then I heard her lighter click as she fired up a cigarette.

  Cindy shook her head. “Smoking. She’s too much. How do you work with her?”

  “Oh, she’s okay. Tough, sure. But really supportive. When it counts.”

  Cindy nodded grudgingly. Last summer, Shirley had a good reason to fire Cindy for plagiarism, a journalist’s guillotine, but had kept her mouth shut. “I’ll go see Doug.”

  “Fingers crossed.” I watched her knock on Doug’s door and hoped he wasn’t too compromised. Cindy waltzed in and I could see he was pushed right up against his desk, his legs tightly tucked under. Good camouflage. Made me think about Ralph. Guess I wouldn’t be seeing him for a week or so. I’d have to talk to him about that. Later.

  I wrote a few sentences on autopilot about fire-retardant sprays while my mind worked out the logistics of Cindy coming with me. Had I been too impulsive? I did that. I made offers before I thought about the impact on me. Going out for a drink with a friend was one thing. Being with them in the same cottage for four or five days was quite another. But Cindy and I had known each other for decades. We were best friends. We’d get along. As long as she kept her hands off my wine.

  But what about Ralph? Maybe I should ask him up for a few days. How would that work if Cindy were there? He worked shifts. Four days on, four days off. Maybe he had a stretch of time coming to him. And that smacker on Saturday night, boy-oh-boy, what a humdinger of a kiss. So much promise! Hot hot hot. Speaking of which, I had to get this fire article done or I wasn’t going anywhere. I pushed my mind towards the benefits of fire-retardants on beds so they wouldn’t burst into flames. If only I were so lucky! Some days it was hard to keep the mind from wandering.

  Cindy grabbed my shoulder from behind while I was deep in thought. Again, I jumped. “Stop that,” I yelled. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to handle her for a week straight. “Don’t frighten people.” I used my mommy voice.

  Cindy looked suitably chastised. “Sorry, I thought it was funny. I see it wasn’t. Sorry.”

  “That’s okay. What did he say?”

  “I can go. I can take the rest of the week off. I have to do a small edit on this last article and get it in on his desk.”

  “I have the same instructions. I have to get this article done, and then I’m free.”

  “What’s it on?”

  “Fire-retardant sprays.”

  “Oh yeah, that stuff is great. I think there’s a company that makes a good one out in BC. Nanaimo. Non-toxic. People spray it on uniforms and bedding and wood doors and stuff like that. I think it’s used on what they call ‘Class A materials.’ It’s purchased a lot by schools and institutions.”

  “Maybe you should write the article. Where did you pick up all this information?”

  “At one point, when I was growing up, I wanted to be a firefighter and I researched all kinds of stuff then.”

  “You wanted to be a firefighter?”

  “Why not? I’m strong. Tall. Brave. I liked the idea of rescuing people and saving historical buildings from burning down.”

  I rolled back my chair and looked at her through new eyes. “You surprise me.”

  Cindy shuffled her chair under her desk, head down. Maybe she was a little embarrassed to be caught outside of her glam persona. “What? You assumed I wanted to be a ballerina when I grew up?”

  We both laughed. At almost six feet tall, she would never be a candidate.

  “Or a…” she paused for effect and rocked her head back and forth, setting off boomeranging curls, “…hairdresser?”

  We laughed even harder. Cindy’s red hair looked like a fireball that had met with a wood chipper.

  “Okay, let’s get these babies done and head on out.” I started singing softly, “I’m gonna leave this city, gotta get away.”

  Cindy started to sing over me, “Over hill, over dale, as we hit the dusty trail.”

  I stopped my singing. Her last name was Dale and she was hinting hard. “Stop dreaming. Ain’t going to happen. I might be over the hill, but I’m not over the dale. I have a boyfriend.”

  She said, “Shit.”

  It was going to be a long week.

  3.

  I PACKED UP THE CAR with everything I thought I’d need for the week, my computer and Lucky’s dog food being at the top of my list. His sensitive stomach literally backfired if he deviated from his diet. It wasn’t pretty. I tossed a few frozen containers of homemade soup into the food bag. And some bread and mayonnaise. Potato chips. Wine. And more wine. It was my fruit. I needed to cover all the food groups.

  But it didn’t matter if I’d forgotten anything, Huntsville was a bustling centre of commerce now with almost twenty thousand people. In the last few years, the town had acquired Walmart, The Home Depot, and Shoppers Drug Mart. Even the old Beer Store in a potholed parking lot had been abandoned for a spanking new one, out by the hardware store. And there was a new liquor store, all shiny chrome and glass, a few years old, by a Staples. I wondered what all this development meant in terms of the town’s priorities and goals for future demographics. No more redneck underbelly?

  As I got into my shitbox car, I began to worry about the bugs up north. I knew there’d be lots this time of year, but I hated insect repellent. I hoped there’d be a wind off the lake to blow the blackflies into the woods. On the other hand, then the wildlife would come into the open to get away from the bugs. Just what I needed. A bear joining me for my morning coffee on the dock. I wished I had a gun. No, I didn’t. I’d never seen a gun in my life and wasn’t about to want one now.

  I pulled in front of Cindy’s house in midtown, slightly north of Yonge and Lawrence. It was only ten years old, a solid four-level stone pile that had replaced a charming two-storey frame house. Her whole neighbourhood had undergone a metamorphosis in the last twenty years with Tudor-fronted bungalows for small families torn down and replaced with McMansions for small families. Every time I saw one of those huge homes looming over a stalwart next-door bungalow, my first thought was of vacuuming. Who wants to clean such monstrosities? But I guessed if you lived in North Toronto you could afford a cleaning service. Or at least have central vac. I personally had never even seen central vac in my life and felt blessed when my thirty-year-old Hoover worked on the rare occasions I hoofed it out of the closet. Having asthma, I had wooden floors and washable rugs.

  Cindy had been married to a dentist until
he had probed the mouth of his hygienist with a fleshy instrument. But Cindy won the mini-castle in the divorce settlement, along with a chunk of change every month. It was my guess that he’d felt guilty because he’d cheated on her. So, although she earned a reporter’s salary, she still had the North Toronto fixings, years later.

  Me? I loved my Cabbagetown neighbourhood with its mixture of welfare recipients, transients, toothless homeless people, smattering of immigrants, and financially stable young professionals. A little extra moolah would have been nice, but I was pretty proud of myself for making a go of it, not that I was jealous of her windfall. I tried to convince myself of this as I looked at her detached stone edifice and did a short Buddhist chant to clear my unkind thoughts.

  It was a beautiful Tuesday morning with sunshine streaming through the translucent leafy arch over her street. Toronto had rules about tree removal for construction of new-builds, and believe me, I knew all about them, having done a story on the specific kind of fencing required to be put around a tree on city property to protect it when a home was being torn down. I knew some useless stuff.

  It was a perfect day for going to the cottage. I couldn’t wait to get to the lake even if I couldn’t swim yet. The ice had gone out late this year, the third week in April, so the water would be frigid. Anyway, I was supposed to be working. I talked myself out of feeling ashamed for wanting to have a little enjoyment while I worked. A hundred-dollar gas card hardly qualified as an expense account that could be misused.

  I texted Cindy that I was in front of her house and waited for her while Lucky slept quietly in the back seat beside my so-called luggage. One of my kids had borrowed the one family suitcase, so my clothes were stuffed into a green garbage bag. Lucky was resting his wet brown nose on the corner of one, leaving little droplets of condensed sweat. The next car I owned was going to be a SUV with a huge cargo area where he could stretch out on a nice soft duvet. Beside my Louis Vuitton matching luggage. Oh, the stuff of dreams.

  While I waited for Cindy to emerge, I checked my weather app for the Huntsville forecast. A long row of suns! Temperatures in the high teens! Almost summer! It was going to be a beautiful week, sunny and warm at least until the long weekend. The nights looked warm too, which meant they would be buggy as well, but hey, I could handle it.

  Cindy’s oak door swung open and she staggered out, pulling a huge suitcase on wobbly wheels. She was wearing blue jeans and a bright pink tank top that clashed with her red hair. Three bags were slung across her shoulders. An insulated food bag and a flowered makeup bag hung over her right shoulder, and a large leather satchel, which she referred to as her purse, over the left.

  I jumped out of the car. “Here, let me help you.”

  “No, no,” she panted as she rolled the suitcase down her flagstone path, its wheels bumping over bits of moss. “I’m balanced. If you remove anything, I’ll topple over.”

  I sidestepped around her and behind the car to open the trunk. With a grand gesture I swept aside an old tarp, some empty plastic bottles, and a pile of newspapers to make room for her stuff.

  She grimaced. “I see you’ve cleaned out your car especially for the trip.”

  The bags slipped down her arms onto the sidewalk. Then, with a grunt, she leveraged the suitcase on her knee over the bumper where it tumbled on to the embarrassingly crusty floor of the trunk. She pitched the food bag on top of the suitcase and lugged the ‘purse’ and her makeup to the passenger side of the car. I slammed the lid down leaving paw prints in the grime and dusted my hands off on my jeans. I’d get around to washing the winter salt off the car, one day. We hopped in simultaneously, like synchronized swimmers, our doors banging shut in unison.

  I couldn’t wait to get out of the city. I charged up Avenue Road to the 401, zoomed off the westbound exit, wove in and out between the eighteen-wheelers and then peeled onto the 400 heading north. I played dodge’em with the traffic for a bit while Cindy rummaged in her flowered makeup bag for her mascara. She pulled down the visor to look for a mirror, saw there wasn’t one, shrugged, and proceeded to mascara her lashes. She never once looked in the rear-view mirror. She never once poked herself in the eye. Her hand was completely steady as I swerved and sped up, braked and slowed down. Years of practice, I guessed, getting ready for work while driving to the office.

  “Stop trying to wreck my beautiful makeup job,” she finally yelped as I zoomed around a huge Dodge Ram.

  “I don’t think I could if I tried. You clearly have tons of experience with car salons.”

  “Well, I do get up late some mornings. It’s harder eating and putting on blusher at the same time while driving, so this is a snap.”

  “You’re never late, that’s for sure.” I was being kind. She snorted.

  The traffic eased off just past Barrie, and I set my cruise control for one hundred and nine kilometres an hour, nineteen over the limit of ninety. Who drives at ninety kilometres an hour? The cops were few and far between this Tuesday morning and I knew they only stopped people going twenty over the limit. By the time we passed Orillia, the stress of the city was behind us and our shoulders dropped from around our ears. I hummed a few bars about country roads taking me home. I was so happy about heading north. A paid vacation, no less.

  “So,” Cindy interrupted my revelry, “any story ideas?”

  “That’s for me to know and you never to find out. You’re on holiday. I’m the one working.”

  Cindy thought about that for a bit. The miles ticked by. We passed some roadkill. The poor raccoon’s feet were straight up in the air, frozen in rigor. We both saw it and we both said nothing. The silence expanded as the pavement hummed below us. A few miles later, Cindy cleared her throat. “Good to get your feet up.”

  I choked back a laugh.

  Then she said, “I’m always after a story.”

  We drove in silence for another twenty minutes with this defining pronouncement echoing in the car. When we got to Gravenhurst I said, “You’re right.”

  “Right about what?”

  “You’re always after a story.”

  “Oh that. Yes, I always am. So…”

  “I’m not sure it’s a story, but it might be.”

  “If you’re not sure, then it is. Believe me, I can make a story out of a blade of grass.”

  “Well, the property next to my family’s cottage was purchased by a developer.”

  “Ah, conflict between the natives and the urbanites. Environmental meltdown. Displacement of wildlife. Light pollution. Animal protection. There’s a story there, for sure.”

  “It could be a three-way conflict between the natives, the locals, and the urbanites. You gotta be careful, Cindy. People are touchy. Especially about development.”

  “Sorry.”

  She sung the word. And then corrected herself, “Indigenous. Indigenous people. Not natives.” She never wanted to offend. “What’s he going to build?”

  “It might be a she. That’s what I’m going to find out. Maybe a golf course and condos.”

  “Golf course? Watch out. Tree huggers hate those things. The land is shaved clean of all growth, depleting a natural resource so people can hit a tiny white ball around. We need trees for oxygen. Golf courses harm the ozone layer. Plus, the fertilizers run off into the lake, creating algae blooms. Plus, the lake is used to water the greens, draining the aquifer. Plus, wherever there are more people, there is destruction. Air. Land. Water. All in all, really bad for the environment.”

  “Geez, Cindy, I didn’t know you knew so much about development. Where’d you pick all this up?”

  “At one point in my life, I wanted to be a forester.”

  “I thought you wanted to be a fireman, I mean, fighter.”

  “That, too.”

  “What, a man or a fighter?”

  She ignored me. “How many acres is it?”

 
“I’m not sure. It’s so large my family always thought it was Crown land.”

  “How do you know it isn’t?”

  I put on an uppity voice. “Andrew said so.”

  Cindy laughed. “Well, check that out too. He’s not always right. Surprisingly.” She couldn’t stand Andrew. Or most men for that matter. “Sometimes Crown land is sort of taken over by a family, you know, over time, like a hundred years and the title has been obfuscated and then they go and sell it in a private deal. So, maybe it is Crown land. And you can’t develop Crown land unless you meet certain criteria, like providing employment for disenfranchised groups or something.”

  “‘Obfuscated.’ Pretty big word this early in the morning.”

  “Or maybe the person who bought it isn’t a developer at all. Maybe they’re an investor. It is Muskoka, after all. National Geographic’s best summer trip. Maybe someone bought it to sit on and cash in sometime during the next decade. Maybe it isn’t a story and you’ll be stuck doing a review of all the new ice cream parlours in Huntsville.”

  I set my mouth in a tight line. “I doubt it. Andrew might be an asshole, but he probably researched it.”

  “We can go to the Town Hall and check it out.”

  “What do you mean, ‘we’?”

  Cindy merely smiled and looked out the window. The miles rolled by, past hundreds of trees. Finally, she asked, “How much longer?”

  “God, you’re whining. You sound just like my kids. About twenty minutes.”

  “I’m starving. What do you want to do about lunch?”

  Cindy was always starving.

  “I brought some stuff like soup, bread, and mayo. There’s usually a can of tuna or something lurking around in the cupboard. We can make it when we get there.”

  “How old’s the tuna?”

  “Don’t worry, the health inspector has been by.” Although Cindy had terrible table manners, she was a bit paranoid about her food quality. But maybe she had a point about the tuna. If there was a can, it had probably been sitting there all winter. Can one eat a can of food that’s been frozen? I had no idea. I tried to remember what I had read about Arctic explorations where a stash of cans was found. Did it say that the cans were perfectly edible? I didn’t ask her to google it.