Annabel - Kathleen Winter [98]
There was a news rack with the Evening Telegram and the Newfoundland Herald, some real estate listings, and other brochures, and there were road maps of the entire highway system of Newfoundland and Labrador, but he could not see a map that was only of St. John’s. There was a man talking to a woman who had come to the cash register with two boxes of macaroni and cheese and a bag of apples. He was handing her something, a cheque. He did not address her by name.
“I think,” he said, “you must have mistakenly written this cheque the last time you came in here, not realizing it would bounce.” He said this kindly. He wore a shop apron stained with fingerprints and with blood from the meat counter, but Wayne felt that he was not a clerk. He had white hair and said everything to the woman in a gentle voice. There was no way the woman could argue. She took money out of her purse and was about to put the apples and the macaroni back, but the man told her it was all right. “You can take those,” he said, “and settle with us the next time you come in.” He let her go out feeling that he believed she had not written his store a bad cheque on purpose. Now the man turned to Wayne, and Wayne felt he could ask him for what he needed.
“I’m looking for a place to stay, and I need a map. And I would also like to use the toilet if you have one.”
The toilet was up the narrowest set of stairs Wayne had ever seen. When he came down again, the man, who said he was Mr. Caines, told him the stairs were a hundred years old, and two men were coming the next day to tear every one of them down and put up a new set that did not sag or creak and that would be six inches wider.
“You’ve just seen a relic that is about to be no more. I’m curious to know how they’ll do it.” Mr. Caines opened a new box of Caramel Log bars and set them beside the licorice. “I’d like to see how they dismantle that.”
He did not have a map for sale but he had his own map of downtown St. John’s behind the counter, and he opened it and showed Wayne how King’s Bridge Road opened onto a road called Forest Road behind the Newfoundland Hotel. “The Forest Road Apartments,” he said, “are the best place for someone like you to go. Someone new in town. You’ll get a clean apartment and it won’t be too expensive, and it’s only a twenty-minute walk from downtown . . . Steve!”
A boy who had been putting egg sandwiches in a cooler came over. Mr. Caines marked the route three times with a pencil, trying to be sure Wayne knew how to get there, then he said, “Steve, walk up the rest of the east end of Duckworth Street with this man here and show him how you get to Forest Road.” Mr. Caines looked up the phone number of Chesley Outerbridge. He said Chesley Outerbridge owned the Forest Road Apartments and would help Wayne if he told him Mr. Caines had directed him.
Steve was about fifteen years old and Wayne wondered why he was not in school. “Forest Road is useless,” he told Wayne. “You should go to the Battery, where I live. I know at least four places for rent over there, and you’ll get them a lot cheaper and it’s way more interesting. Katie Twomey’s place has no one living in it, and one wall is bare rock where water comes down into a little pool on the floor that you can drink out of.”
“Steve,” Mr. Caines said, “I’ve told Wayne about the Forest Road Apartments because lots of people new in town go there. They are good apartment buildings for anyone new.” To Wayne he said, “The Battery is all right if you were born into