Part 27 (1/2)
Rajinder leaned forward. ”Admittedly, I am not an expert in affairs of the heart, but that does not seem right.”
”Is it something about your past? Something about your life before we got together?”
”Yes.”
”Well, don't feel guilty about keeping it a secret.” Madison snorted. ”It's none of my business, really.”
Rajinder sat back in his wing chair. He looked toward the stereo system, the unsettling hum of Astor Piazzolla's bandoneon. ”I disagree.”
”Okeedokee. I'm pregnant.”
Rajinder made a squeaking sound.
”Four months' pregnant. Haven't you noticed I'm, you know, expanding outward?”
The tango music seemed to be too much for Rajinder. He walked to the stereo system and put in another CD, pressed play, and walked out of the room. A Willie Nelson song filled the room in his absence.
Madison's lips were dry so she licked them. Two competing forces in her body, the need to cry and the need to scream, crashed up against one another and caused a sort of emotional paralysis. Instead of thinking of Rajinder and the bedroom door he had just slammedthree timesMadison considered Willie Nelson's long, braided pigtails. She wondered if Willie Nelson had paid those back taxes he owed the American government, and if his marijuana possession charges made touring difficult.
The doorbell rang. Madison stood in front of the chesterfield, thinking about Willie Nelson. It rang again. On the third ring, Rajinder plodded through the living room to the front door without looking at Madison.
”Hey, lovebirds!” said Jonas.
When Willie Nelson wore his American flag bandana, was he being sincere or ironic or both? Even though Madison had never really liked Willie Nelson's voice, she felt a certain kins.h.i.+p with him: the red hair, the aura of lost hope and disappointment.
Rajinder took Jonas's flowers, bottle of wine, and pony-shaped bundle.
”They're for Jeanne and Katie.” Jonas took a couple of steps and slid on the hardwood in his socks. ”You have the slipperiest floor, Raj.”
Rajinder stood near the dining room table clutching the wine, flowers, and pony. Madison could only see Jonas with the rightmost edge of her peripheral vision.
Jonas stopped sliding. ”I haven't been listening to the news. Is Earth gonna be hit by a meteor?”
All at once, the spell of Willie Nelson broke. ”I told Rajinder I'm pregnant.”
”Oh,” said Jonas. ”Oh.”
”Good Hearted Woman” began to play. Jonas began stomping his feet and singing along. He clapped and hopped around in his thick black socks. Then he stopped singing. ”Maybe I'll go home and drink a bottle of cheap vodka.”
Rajinder turned to Madison. ”I am having trouble deciding how to express the way I feel.”
Madison bit the insides of her cheek so she wouldn't cry.
”This is not ideal.”
”No, Rajinder, it isn't, and I'm sorry for that.”
He walked across the living room and stood in front of Madison for a moment. Then he hugged her. Madison reached around him, and it felt as though he were flexing every muscle in his body. ”Congratulations,” he said. ”What a tremendous blessing.” Then he fetched her jacket and helped her into it.
According to his shoulders, which were up around his ears, Rajinder didn't want Jonas's company right now. Neither did Madison. But the core of politeness in Rajinder was too strong and Madison didn't feel capable of speaking. In desperate silence, and cold rain, they walked out the back door to Rajinder's garage. Madison sat in the pa.s.senger seat and Jonas got in the back. Even though it required going the wrong way on a one-way, Rajinder drove through the alley to reach the Garneau Theatre parking lot and turned south.
Madison waited. She waited some more. Then she said, ”So, Rajinder. What's your secret?”
66.
suburbia Rajinder Chana gripped the steering wheel with both hands, his jaw clenched. Next to him, Madison dabbed at her eyes with a red handkerchief.
In the back, Jonas slouched and the leather squeaked. Was it a character flaw, Jonas wondered, to enjoy romantic tension? It was tangible, chewy even; he wanted the ride to go on forever.
Driving south, with the smell of cut lumber in the air, Rajinder sneezed. Then he took in a long breath and said, ”On the night Benjamin Perlitz was killed, I was at a Fringe play about the addictive nature of p.o.r.nography.”
Jonas remembered sitting in the beer tent that night with Madison and a few actors. At one point in the evening, during someone's drunken soliloquy, he had seen Rajinderthe young Indian man from across the streetpa.s.s with a program. ”I saw you there.”
”Benjamin had not planned to enter his own house. He had planned to enter mine.”
”What do you mean?” Madison turned to him.
”Benjamin Perlitz had planned to shoot me that night. When he crossed the street to his own house, he had only meant to wait and watch through the front window until I returned. Of course, he wasn't blameless. Benjamin was verbally abusive with Jeanne and threatened to shoot her if she tried to escape with Katie. The police arrived after she sneaked a call with her cellular phone. Shortly thereafter, he went berserk.”
Jonas slid to the middle of the back seat and leaned in between Rajinder and Madison. ”Because you stopped lending him gambling money?”
”A couple of months after Jeanne sent Benjamin away, I became...a comfort to her. Somehow he discovered this. Through Katie, I believe.”
”You were sleeping with Jeanne?” Madison's voice registered somewhere between fascination and horror.
Rajinder didn't answer for several blocks. In a small but sure voice, pa.s.sing some strip malls, he said, ”For a time.”
”When did it end?”
”Long before Benjamin arrived with his rifle.”
Madison shook her head. ”How on earth did you keep it out of the newspaper?”
”Police discretion.”
This inspired another long silence. In almost any other circ.u.mstance, Jonas would have slapped Rajinder on the arm and called him a dog. Nay, a dawg. But it didn't seem appropriate. The Mercedes motor was quiet, even when Rajinder accelerated, which added to the gloom. They pa.s.sed the retail giants and fast-food outlets of South Edmonton Common, and Jonas realized he had forgotten to eat that morning. A nasty mood and low-level catatonic state of hypoglycemia could hit at any time, despite his present state of glee. ”Hey, you guys think Jeanne'll serve snacks?”
Neither of them offered a thought.
”Potato chips? Watermelon?”
In the deep south of the city, the Summerside neighbourhood sat under several shades of grey. The wind galloped across the prairie and lashed the left side of the car as they waited at the stoplight. When the lights changed, Rajinder turned past the old country cemetery and into the flat subdivision of ma.s.sive wooden houses.
”Those baby carrots, even? It's my own fault, I guess, for sleeping in. Not that I have anything to eat at my place. There's cereal but no milk. Well, actually, there is some milk. Do you guys have this problem? I have expired milk, way expired, and I know I should pour it down the sink but somethingsome mystifying inner forcetells me to leave it in the fridge. Leave it till next time.”