An Imperfect Librarian - Elizabeth Murphy [22]
The fresh air on the walk from the library to the parking lot revives me. I feel less nauseated. The car coughs and chokes but doesn’t start. My breath condenses on the windshield. I trace the sum with the tip of my finger: -3 + -6 + -2 = -11. Minus two equals the number of years (rounded off to the nearest black whole) that I wasted after she left. I should have clued in long before that, like during the three years together before our six years of marriage. I breathe in deeply, then exhale onto the glass. Like magic, the sum disappears. Like magic again, the car starts when I turn the key.
I drive to Gower Street and park in front of the house. It’s not hard to find, even in the thickest fog. The scaffolding gives it away. Cyril’s supposed to be repairing the clapboard when he’s not working on building the shed in the backyard. They celebrated the house’s hundredth birthday seven years before I moved into the basement. It still has its original plumbing. Cyril says it’s located in the holiest part of the city. The Anglican Cathedral is around the corner. So are the Basilica, the Presentation and Mercy convents. I was waiting to visit them with Elsa.
A cat dashes across the street as if its path is booby-trapped. A man in a baseball hat, jeans and work boots trudges by, leaning under the weight of a stack of empty cases of beer. An orange cab whizzes past, stops and blows its horn. A voice calls from an open door, “Don’t forget the loaf of bread.” A car pulls up in front of the house. It’s Mercedes.
I step out onto the curb. “How was your shift?”
On or off duty, she recognizes a patient. “What happened to you?”
We stand like statues in front of the house, in between the puddles, under the flickering street light. The fog horn groans. Was that an empathetic response? I wonder. I head towards the lane on the side of the house that leads to the basement. “Stomach flu. Don’t come too close, Mercedes.”
She prescribes ginger ale plus crackers.
I hear her door closing on my way round back. The keyhole in the door of my flat is rusted. I fight with the lock while drops of water drip onto my head. The door opens and I run my fingers along the inside wall to switch on the light. After a shower, I go straight to bed then curl into a ball to conserve heat. I stare at the ceiling. I don’t have to stare far because the height is under code at seven rather than the normal eight feet. Cyril claims the basement is warmer that way. “You’re a lucky man to have an apartment that heats up so fast,” he says. I might be lucky if Cyril turned on the furnace more often. I don’t complain about the cold. If they made it any more comfortable, I’d be less inclined to search for a proper place to live. Item number three on my priority list: find new flat. It’s been high on the list since the day after I arrived in Newfoundland.
My colleagues at the university in Norway warned me life in Newfoundland would be harsh. They were convinced I’d never survive here. They said I’d either be taken hostage by flies just off a hunger strike, pickled from a diet of salted beef, pork and cod, or worse, turned into a native – literally, as in Mohawk with a piercing, fierce cry. They gave me a copy of Robinson Crusoe for a going-away gift. On the inside cover they wrote: Something to read while you’re shipwrecked in Newfieland.
I climb out of bed, go to the closet, open my suitcase then rummage through clothes not worth unpacking. The book is poked in a side pocket with some dirty laundry. I climb under the covers again. My nest is still warm. Defoe’s story takes me to the seventeenth century. Crusoe has ignored his father’s advice. He’s taken to the sea and he’s sailing in a storm in the Caribbean. The wind is blowing the ship towards the shore where it will be crushed into a thousand pieces. Before that happens, a mountain of a wave hits. Crusoe is swallowed