“Yeah,” Kit replied as she split an English muffin. “Joe Shoe called to see how you were doing.” She put the halves of the muffin in the toaster oven and turned it on.
“Does he want me to call him back?”
“He said he’d call later,” Kit said. The kettle began to whistle. Kit turned off the flame. She dropped a tea bag into a mug and poured water over it. She placed the mug and a teaspoon in front of Victoria. “You and Shoe,” she said. “Were you lovers too, before you met Patrick?”
The question caught Victoria off guard. “God, no,” she said.
“Why do you say it like that?” Kit said. “He’s not exactly my type, but he’s not that bad, either, if you like them big and battered. What’s wrong with him?”
“Nothing,” Victoria said. “Nothing’s wrong with him.” She scooped the tea bag out of the mug.
“But there’s something between you, isn’t there?”
Victoria looked at Kit and held her eyes for a moment. They were the same blue-green colour as the glacier lakes Victoria had seen when she and Patrick had flown over the Rockies on the way back from Montreal. Kit’s eyes weren’t cold, though, as Victoria imagined a glacier lake to be, and the longer she looked into them, the warmer they seemed to become. She looked away, breaking the connection, looking down at the mug of tea on the countertop.
“I told you how Shoe saved Bill Hammond’s life.”
“Yeah,” Kit said.
“Well, he may have saved my life, too.”
“What do you mean, ‘may have’?”
Victoria took an unsteady breath.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Kit said.
“I do want to tell you,” Victoria replied. “I’m just not sure you’re going to like what you hear.” Kit didn’t say anything. Victoria took another breath.
“I’d been sleeping with Bill for three or four months, almost from the day I started working for him. It wasn’t what you’d call a healthy relationship. He was, well, sexually repressed, I guess. I was pretty messed up too. I’d never really gotten over my parents’ deaths, despite years of having my head shrunk. Anyway, whenever Bill’s wife was away, which was quite often—she was in and out of rehab for almost their entire marriage—I would stay at his house. One night, when I just couldn’t take it any more, I took off.”
Not before stealing a half-dozen pieces of antique gold jewellery that belonged to Bill’s wife, she recalled, as well as $150 in cash Bill had left on the kitchen table for the housekeeper. But she didn’t tell Kit that.
“I didn’t know where I was going,” she said. “All I knew was that I couldn’t stay there any longer and I didn’t want to go back to the company condo I was staying in. I was pretty stoned, on vodka and some hash I’d scored, but somehow, I don’t remember how, or why, I ended up at the marina near Granville Island where Shoe lived on this ratty old boat. It was around two in the morning.”
“I don’t suppose he was pleased to see you,” Kit said.
“No, he wasn’t, especially when I puked all over the deck and passed out.”
She paused as she recalled coming to in a bathroom not much larger than a closet, slumped on a stainless steel toilet seat in her bra and panties, the stink of vomit clogging her sinuses. Shoe was adjusting the spray in the tiny shower stall.
“Where are my clothes?” she asked thickly.
“I threw them overboard,” Shoe said. He had, too, but he’d tied a line to them. “You were sick,” he said. “It’s in your hair.” He helped her to her feet and steered her toward the shower stall. “In you go.”
“Wait,” she said. She reached behind her back with both hands and unhooked her bra, letting it slip down her arms and fall to the floor. Holding his arm, she stepped out of her panties. If Shoe was discomfited by her nudity, he didn’t show it, which pissed her off for some reason. She got into the shower, gasped as the water hit her, and slumped to the floor of the stall. Shoe closed the clear plastic curtain, then collected her underwear and left her there, huddled in the warm spray.
How long she stayed that way she wasn’t sure. At some point, though, when the water started to cool off, she struggled to her feet, found a bar of soap and a cloth, and scrubbed herself from scalp to toes. There was a bottle of dandruff shampoo, and although she’d always hated the nasty stuff, she used it. As she was rinsing, Shoe knocked on the door.
“Everything all right?”
She didn’t answer.
The door opened. She stood, arms braced against the wall, head bowed in the spray, water coursing down the length of her body.
“Getting a good look?” she said, without opening her eyes.
The door closed...
“Vic?” Kit said.
“Sorry,” Victoria said, returning to the present. “Anyway, Shoe cleaned me up and gave me one of his sweatshirts to wear—it hung to my knees—and put me to bed to sleep it off. I didn’t sleep, though. I could hear him moving around in the deckhouse, making up his berth. Then the phone rang. ‘Yes, she’s here,’ I heard him say. A second or two later he said, ‘Pardon me for saying so, but you should have thought of that before you started sleeping with her.’”
She paused and drank some of her cooling tea. Despite the passage of time, her recollection of what happened next was mercilessly clear and it made her squirm with shame and embarrassment to recall it. She wasn’t sure she could get it out, but she owed it to Kit—and herself—to try.
“I went up to the deckhouse and asked him if it had been Bill on the phone. He said it was, that he’d called to make sure I was all right. ‘I bet,’ I said. Then I pointed to the berth he was making up and told him it looked awfully small, that he could sleep down below with me if he wanted. He said he’d be fine and I told him I wasn’t asking him to have sex with me. But I was, of course.
“‘I’ll sleep here,’ he said.
“‘Have it your way,’ I told him. ‘There won’t be another offer.’ I started to go below, then turned back to him and said, ‘What the fuck’s your problem anyway?’
“‘I’m not sure I understand the question,’ he said.
“‘I just offered you a free piece of ass,’ I said. ‘Maybe I’m not at my best right now, but men aren’t supposed to be that picky. I know you’re not queer, so what’s the problem?’
“He said, ‘I make it a rule to never sleep with the boss’s girlfriends. Or take advantage of a lady when she’s had too much to drink.’
“‘I do some of my best work when I’ve had a few too many,’ I said to him and tried to undo the string of his sweatpants.
“He grabbed my wrists and told me to go below and sleep it off. I twisted away and swore at him and told him I’d cut his fucking balls off if he tried anything. Then I fell down the companionway steps.
“He came down and tried to help me, but I hit him and screamed at him not to touch me. I pulled off the sweatshirt he’d given me to wear and threw it at him. I remembered I’d had a backpack when I’d left Bill’s. ‘Where is my backpack?’ I shouted. ‘Where are my clothes? I’m getting out of here.’
“He told me I’d left it on deck. When he went up to get it, I went into the head and locked the door. I found a bottle of acetaminophen tablets in the medicine cabinet. The bottle had a childproof cap, and I when opened it, the top popped off and half the tablets fell onto the floor. I poured the rest into my mouth, washing them down with handfuls of water from