Part 19 (2/2)
Madison didn't want to get her hopes up in case Rajinder, whose social skills bordered on performance art, just wanted to be friends. After all, this was an early dinner on a Monday, a pre-soaps event instead of a romantic Friday night. Then there was the boring weirdo factor: maybe Rajinder was a boring weirdo.
Even so, she drank some non-alcoholic Saskatoon berry wine from the farmers' market, lit sandalwood candles, and filled the bas.e.m.e.nt suite with her most powerful pre-date CD: The Cure's ”Mixed Up.” Of course, she also wore her number-one pair of panties, the blue-and-white ones with the mosquito on the front.
The tiny bathroom mirror was not full-length so Madison had to stand on a milk crate to check herself out in profile. Her jean jacket and best scarf added a French flair to her ensemble, and helped hide the belly.
Did wanting to go to Paris make her a proper francophile? Was it a coincidence, un heureux concours de circonstances, that they both loved France? It didn't matter, really. What mattered was that for the first time in over two years, Madison was genuinely interested in a male of the species who wasn't a sixteenth-century j.a.panese poet.
Finished in the bathroom, and with another ten minutes to waste, Madison danced around the bas.e.m.e.nt suite with Mr. Goober, the plush monkey her father had won at a Calaway Park balloon-popping kiosk in 1987.
As Madison danced to The Cure, she told Mr. Goober, in French, that she loved him. She had always loved him. It had been a secret before but now Madison didn't care if the whole world knew. ”Monsieur Goober,” she said, with a tender kiss, ”je vous aime.”
There was a knock on the door, seven minutes early. Madison shrieked and threw the monkey. Mr. Goober crashed into a stone G.o.ddess statue on the television, a gift from her mother. Madison shrieked again, this time in stealth. The windows leading into her bas.e.m.e.nt suite were not large, but she was stricken with the certainty that Rajinder had just seen her slow-dancing and smooching with Mr. Goober. She ran into the tiny bathroom to both check her makeup and register her mortification. Then she turned off the stereo, blew out the candles, took a deep and restorative breath, and started up the stairs.
Rajinder stood a few feet from the door in a grey suit and a white s.h.i.+rt opened at the neck. He held a bouquet of freesia. ”Jonas told me they were your favourite.”
”They are my favourite.” Madison took the flowers and smelled them, peeking up to scan his face for a clue. No, he hadn't seen the je vous aime bit. ”Thanks, Rajinder.”
”It is probably unwise to carry them with us. Would you like me to wait here for a few minutes while you put them in a vase?”
Madison knew if she went inside she would have to invite him in, but her bas.e.m.e.nt suite was so small and her parents' cast-off furniture was twenty years old and smelled like stale hamburger buns. ”Um,” she said.
”I have several vases.”
”Do you? Because mine are all dirty.”
Madison led the way. Loud heavy-metal music seemed to be coming from 11 Garneau, s.h.i.+rley's house, but Madison a.s.sumed it was the Doppler effectuniversity students a block or two away, destroying their inner ears. The music was annoying but not so loud that it mitigated the silence between her and Rajinder. And since she was not the sort of woman who tolerated silences of this sort, Madison said, to her own amazement, ”What do you think about the new conductor of the symphony?”
”He is very dynamic.”
”Yes, dynamic.”
”Are you a fan of the symphony?”
Madison started up Rajinder's walk. In past relations.h.i.+ps, all of them somewhere between unsatisfying and disastrous, she had been something of a liar. If she had felt a lie would make her seem more sophisticated or attractive, she told it. Every time. She was almost thirty, though, and rocketing into single motherhood.
On the porch Madison smelled the freesia again. ”Oh sure. But I have to admit I've never really been in the Winspear. It's kind of expensive and, well, I'm poor. A couple of years ago Jonas and I hung around in Hawrelak Park during Symphony Under the Sky and it sure sounded...pretty.”
Rajinder opened his front door. ”Please, leave your shoes on.”
”Are you sure?”
”I insist.”
Rajinder took the flowers and cut the stems over the sink. He pointed up to a collection of seven vases on a shelf, and asked Madison to choose. She chose a white one, with lime-green polka dots.
”I have spoken to the marketing department about attracting young people to the symphony.”
”I am so prepared to be attracted.”
”Competing against Hollywood and reality television and sports and video games has proven difficult. With the generation below us, it could be impossible. I am afraid we will witness the near-total erosion of both local art and high art in our lifetimes.”
Madison was feeling dense, so instead of responding verbally she produced a thoughtful hum. Rajinder dropped the flowers into the vase and pointed out his kitchen window at the backyard of 11 Garneau. Five hulking young men sat around a fire pit with a case of Pilsner and a ghetto blaster. Madison stepped forward and stood close enough to Rajinder that their hands touched. ”I thought I heard music next door.”
”Ms. Wong has guests.”
”Who are they?”
”I had never seen them before yesterday evening. The large man drives a loud red truck.”
”Raymond and s.h.i.+rley's kids were way too fastidious to have friends like that.”
Rajinder checked his watch. ”Our reservation is in half an hour. Perhaps we can explore this mystery another time.”
It was, Madison felt, her gravest misfortune that as he looked up from his watch, Rajinder's gaze lingered on her belly.
50.
universal health care The beige leather seats in Rajinder's Mercedes were cracked and peeling, and there were several large rock chips in the wind-s.h.i.+eld. At first, Madison wanted to ask why he hadn't bought something newer, given his financial freedom, but by the time they reached the strip mall that housed Jack's Grill she had developed tender feelings for the old car; Madison wouldn't have known what to think if he drove a Hummer.
”Strip malls,” she said, as they walked across the parking lot to the entrance. ”The future of world cuisine.”
Rajinder didn't respond to her sarcasm, and she felt slightly shamed.
At the restaurant door, he paused for a moment and they looked at one another. It was a windy fall night. Leaves blew across the parking lot in short gusts and the light of the setting sun went metallic. There was nothing to say and Madison summoned every ounce of her strength to let the quiet to be the quiet. She pushed a stray lock of hair from her face and smiled. A white piece of fluff had attached itself to the lapel of Rajinder's suit so she pulled it off and allowed it to join the progress of the leaves.
The moment became a minute. Madison relaxed and breathed, and focused. She was standing outside the door of a restaurant she could not afford, on a windy but not cold evening, staring at a handsome man who had never made an ironic comment in her company. She looked past the brown of his eyes into the tiny pyramids of colour and s.h.i.+ne around his pupils, the biological factness of Rajinder Chana. Who remembers on a dateif this was a datethat we're all just animals making romance out of eating, reproducing, and sleeping?
Madison prepared to be kissed.
Just then, the door flew open and the giant vertical handle whacked Rajinder in the forehead. He stumbled backwards but didn't fall as a couple in mid-conversation barged out. Both the man and woman stood in front of Rajinder, apparently as stunned as Madison. The man apologized and put his arm around Rajinder for a moment. Rajinder a.s.sured them he was perfectly fine and the couple started away, both of them cringing.
”That door really nailed him,” the man said, loud enough for Madison to hear.
Rajinder stood up straight and dusted himself off, even though he hadn't come in contact with any dust. He cleared his throat and wobbled slightly, like a drunk man acting sober. ”Are you ready?”
”Let's make sure you're okay first. That was loud.”
”Oh I am most definitely okay, Madison. Most definitely.” And with that, Rajinder stepped forward, careened to the left, and fell to the pavement.
The man who had opened the door sprinted back across the parking lot to help Rajinder to his feet. Madison wanted to take him to the University Hospital in the Mercedes but the man guided Rajinder straight to his pickup truck.
<script>