He Came In Whistling

10. He Came In Whistling

Wendel came in whistling, placed his cup of Tim’s coffee on his desk, removed his coat and hung it on the coat rack, stepped out of his galoshes and threw them into the corner behind his desk.

Sam Kelly looked up. “Somebody got lucky?”

Wendel took a seat behind his desk. “Hey, it’s a beautiful day.”

“There’s a storm coming.”

Wendel smiled. “Okay, I’m in a good mood.”

Sam smirked. “Lot of that going around. Peggy has the same virus. It must be the weather.”

Wendel ignored Sam’s remark and shuffled through some papers on his desk.

“No word on the baby yet?” Wendel opened the file he had been looking for. He reached for his coffee and took off the lid, dropping it on the floor. “Man, Tim does make good coffee.”

“You’re a litter bug.” Sam gestured to the floor where Wendel’s lid lay. “There’s no word on the baby yet but it can’t come soon enough. Saturday night was another false alarm. I know that trip to the St. Joseph’s Hospital like the back of my hand. Nothing like waiting two hours in the ER on a Saturday night. I missed the game. Who won?”

“Why are you asking me? You’ve got the newspaper on your desk.”

Sam chuckled. “So tell me about your Saturday night. “

Wendel responded without looking up. “Like I’m going to tell you.”

Sam put down the file he had been looking at on his desk. “You certainly have adjusted to single life, Wendel. What’s your secret?”

“It’ s all about balance,” Wendel said mimicking a philosophical tone. “Don’t get too high when you’re up and don’t get too low when you’re down. And find a lovely sweet mouth to wrap around your…”

“Balance,” Sam interjected. “You’ve never had a balanced moment in your mercurial life. Did you have the kids on the weekend?”

“Ya,” Wendel responded, his shoulders lowering.

“How are the kids?”

“Do you have any idea how much water a teenage girl uses in one shower? And the towels. Helen uses every one in the room. To her, if a towel is used, it’s unusable. Of course it’s her filth. And my son, Michael! Michael’s become what they call a Wigger, a white kid that wants to be black. His pants are hanging down under his ass, the legs dragging under his feet. He wears this rag around his head and he’s always listening to that rap shit on his headphones. I’m afraid we might have to get those things surgically removed from his ears.”

Sam chuckled.

“Wait until that baby of yours becomes a teenager, Sam. We’ll see who has the last laugh.”

“The kids like your new digs?”

“The kids love my apartment especially the indoor pool. All the kids in the building hang out there. It’s like fucking Woodstock.”

“You left them alone when you were out on your date?”

“Sure,” Wendel responded. “They’re pretty responsible kids.”

Sam started to laugh.

Wendel put down his coffee. “You tricked me. Okay, I went out on a date. But that’s as much information as you’re going to get out of me.”

Sam shook with laughter. “Your shift has just started. I’ve got lots of time.”

Sam picked up the file he’d tossed on his desk.

“You still looking through old files?”

“Keeps my mind sharp. Been looking through the Mackenzie file. God, what a mess that was. Ontario Hydro finally bought his old place. Tore down the house.”

“What happened to old Joe?”

Sam shrugged his shoulders. “Took his money and ran. Or whatever he had left after his lawyers got through with it. How’s Edna taking the divorce?”

“She’s taken to the bottle. Our marriage is hardly in the grave and she’s throwing herself under every available warm body. What kind of affect can that be having on our daughter, seeing her mother shacked up with any Joe that comes along? Friday evening I had to go down to the Zig Zag and pick her up.”

“Edna passed out in the washroom,” Wendel continued. “I drove her home and put her to bed. Helen was crying in her room. I tried to talk to her. Have you ever tried to talk to a teenage girl? She started lecturing me about my behavior. It was Edna that was passed out, but it was me that had to listen to my daughter’s lecture.”

“Sounds like your daughter is growing up pretty fast.”

Wendel started laughing. “You know the banker at the Commerce? What’s his name? Phil Harman. Well, Phil was in the Zig Zag. You should have seen the broad he was with. Way out of Phil’s league. A tall blonde. And I mean tall. God, the woman must be six feet. What is Phil, five foot nothing? And what a set of knockers this broad had on her. As soon as I stepped up to the bar to talk to Jack, I could see her in the mirror. You should have seen the eyes she was giving me.”

“Don’t all women give you that look?”

“Very funny,” Wendel responded. “I’m not kidding. The question I asked myself was, where did a woman like that come from? Unless she’s working at the Diamond. She had a body like a stripper. But, one of the fellows in the station would have let us know if there was a dish like that living in the area.”

“Isn’t Phil married?” Sam asked.

Wendel nodded. “And your point?”

Sam shrugged.

Wendel thought for a moment. “I take your point. Phil never struck me as the philandering type either. But, I guess there’s a first time for everything. He’s one of the fellows that collects the money at church. I’m sure Father O’Reilly would have been a little surprised to see Phil in the Zig Zag.”

“Father O’Reilly hangs out in the Zig Zag?”

“Piss off!” Wendel cried. “What do you think a broad like that would see in Phil?”

Sam shrugged. “What file are you looking at?”

“That Armstrong kid. You know he’s working at the Canadiana?”

Sam nodded. “Part time job. Margaret says he’s a good worker.”

“Scares me,” Wendel said.

“How so?”

“The Armstrong kid is only a couple years older than my son. Goes to the same high school as Michael. He’s got himself a tidy little rap sheet already. God, you wonder if your own kid is going to go down that same road. What goes on in these kid’s heads? Michael doesn’t talk to me. When I think of all the stupid things I did as a kid…”

“Michael is not Junior Armstrong, Wendel.”

Wendel looked at the file for a moment. “Imagine having to live with the knowledge that your mother murdered your father. It would have pushed me over the edge, I can tell you that. What are we going to do with this kid?”

Sam shook his head. “I didn’t know you went to church, Wendel.”

“When I have the kids,” Wendel responded then smiled.

“Penny for your thoughts.”

Wendel laughed. “Sam, you don’t have a big enough bank account.”

Edna

9. Edna

Edna Olson smiled as she warmed the glass of white wine in the palm of her hand. With the other hand, her long spider fingers traced the glass’ edge. Her painted blue eyes rose. Frank Sinatra crooned one of his standards, The Lady is a Tramp, from speakers hidden in the ceiling of the Zig Zag. She raised her glass to her lips, and took a sip. A smudge of lipstick lay on the glass like a stain. Why does Sinatra make me feel like I belong in bars?

“No more whiskey sours,” she said smiling at the bartender. “I’m sticking to white wine. They don’t give you a headache.”

The bartender looked up. Long thread like hairs fell over his eyes. He hadn’t been listening. Edna glanced around the small narrow room. She could have sworn there was another customer in the place. Perhaps they went into the washroom.

“I didn’t know that,” Jack, the bartender, said with a laugh, the gaps in his teeth stained with cigarette smoke.

Edna nodded toward the bartender, accepting his accolades. He had been listening after all. Edna liked Jack. Everyone liked Jack. He never seemed to rub anyone the wrong way. But then, wasn’t that what made a good bartender? And Jack never made advances toward Edna. Not that she wouldn’t have minded. It had been a long time since a man looked at her that way. She recalled the time before she was married to Wendel. She smiled. Jack looked at Edna waiting to hear what she found amusing.

“That’s the trouble with all these diets people go on,” Edna said. “Doesn’t do you any good to go cold turkey. Just increases the appetite. Crash diets followed by binges. The body thinks it’s dieing and turns all your muscle to fat. Counter productive. I lost twenty pounds, Jack, since my divorce. And how did I do it? Baby steps. A pound here and a pound there. Nothing dramatic. Nothing to write home about, but I lost it. And I’ve kept that weight off.”

Edna slid off the stool and modeled for Jack. Jack smiled appreciatively. Edna laughed and climbed back on her stool..

“They say there’s going to be a big storm,” Jack said with a smile, cleaning a glass. Jack was always polishing glasses.

“First the waistline,” Edna continued. “Then the drinking. I’ll stop drinking too. It’s only a matter of will power. After the booze, I’ll attack cigarettes. One battle at a time.” Edna took another sip of wine.

“Slow at the office, today?”

Edna shook her head. “Busy as hell, but Mr. Brennan doesn’t mind if I leave a little early on Fridays. Wendel, my ex, didn’t think I could hold down a job. Guess I was lucky. Mary, the girl who had my job got offered an office position downtown in one of those high office towers. I guess the money was better. Couldn’t work that high up. Hell, sitting on this stool gets me dizzy.”

“I’m not much good with heights either,” Jack said.

“And you have to travel downtown every day on the subway. Pushed against all those sweaty people. I worked my tail off this week. A lot of rush jobs. I guess I deserve a little treat.”

Jack nodded.

“Did you hear we had a break-in?”

Jack shook his head.

“Yup.” Edna shook her head and finished her wine. She ordered another. “Bunch of kids. I don’t know what they thought they were going to find. Nothing in a print shop but paper and ink. We never deal in cash. Kids are so stupid, don’t you think?”

Jack poured Edna another glass of wine and removed her empty glass.

“You better believe it, mister.” Edna nodded and laughed heartily, a smoker’s laugh with a cough added periodically for parenthesis. “Take my kids for example. They think they know everything. They’re good kids but they’re constantly correcting me. Correcting my grammar, correcting my ideas. God, you ‘d think I was a complete moron.” Edna slipped on her stool and grabbed the edge of the bar.

“Silk dress,” she explained and reached for her new drink.

“Maybe you should slow down, Edna.”

“Mr. Brennan likes me.” Edna took out a cigarette. Jack grabbed a lighter from beneath the bar and lit her up. Edna liked that. She looked at Jack from beneath the first smoke of her cigarette. She wondered for a moment about Jack and shook her head.

“Nothing romantic, mind you. Mr. Brennan is like a father to me. If he hadn’t given me the job, I don’t know what we would have done. Getting money from Wendel has been like drawing water from a rock. But I’m moving on, Jack. I put a personal ad on the net. Couldn’t figure out how to put a picture on it so I stole one from another sight. This woman looked like me. Maybe a few years younger. My son is taking it hard. The divorce. He was real close to his dad. Blames it all on me. I’m the bloody villain. Wendel is running around with some slut and I’m the villain. Well, I’ll show him that two can play that game.”

Swinging slowly around on her stool, Edna looked around the bar. Deep in the corner, one of Jack’s regular’s nursed a beer as he watched a tennis match on the television. Edna recognized him. He had been her neighbor when she was a kid. Hadn’t she gone out with his son for a time? What was his name? The front door of the bar opened and a flood of light poured into the darkened tavern. Edna shielded her eyes. Every time someone entered the bar it was like having your picture taken with a flash camera. In walked a striking blonde accompanied by a short man. Edna recognized the man.

“Shit, Jack,” Edna said in confidence. “That’s my bank manager. He’s married with two kids.”

The couple sat down at a table in the corner of the room. The bartender moved from behind the bar and walked over to serve his new customers. Edna watched his retreat in the mirror on the wall. Men are such bastards. Edna stared at the blonde and remembered when she had a body. Before the kids had arrived. Wendel couldn’t get enough of her then.

“Do you recognize the blonde?” Edna asked when Jack returned to the bar. He began preparing some drinks.

“Never saw her before. She’s a stunner.”

“If you say so,” Edna responded. She hated that. When men talked about other women as being beautiful. What am I? Chopped liver?

“Lot of new people moving into the area.” Jack turned away from Edna for a moment.

Edna smirked. “Nobody that looks like her.”

“She can’t hold a candle to you,” Jack said as he picked up his tray and moved across the room.

“You are a sweetheart, Jack.”

Alone now, Edna took out her purse and rummaged through it, looking for her makeup. Taking out a small mirror, she began applying some lipstick. She spotted the blonde in the mirror looking at her. Fucking lesbian!