Free Helpless by Barbara Gowdy Page B

have seen the look he gave her!
    “I don’t mean have sex or anything,” she said. But she thought, So what if we do? It’s not like it’s our little girl’s bedroom or anything, not yet.
    She puts the psychic pouch back in her pocket and lowers the last few blinds. Maybe Frank’s right, she tells herself. Maybe she needs to go away and leave Ron alone to work through whatever it is he has to work through.
    “Y OU DON’T know what love is,” Celia sings to the businessman across from her. On a red ribbon around his neck he wears the plastic identity badge from whatever convention he was at earlier. Things couldn’t have gone all that well because here he is, getting plastered all by himself. He moans along to the songs, occasionally shouts a lyric or two.
    Except for him and a pair of hectically smiling middleagedwomen who glance at the door whenever Wanda, tonight’s waitress, comes in (it would seem they’ve been misled about the Casa Hernandez’s eligible-bachelor population), the place is empty. At night, as Celia is discovering, people show up for Bernie, and when they find out he’s on holiday they go either to some other bar or outside to the patio for the breeze off the lake.
    She finishes the song with a little riff she picked up from Diana Krall. The man claps twice, two whacks of his outstretched hands, as if he were summoning slaves. The women smile apologetically and stand to leave.
    Celia starts in on “Love for Sale.”
    “For sale!” the man blares.
    Wanda comes over to pick up Celia’s empty wine glass. “Cheapsteaks” she hisses, referring to the two women and meaning, of course, “cheapskates.” She’s from Serbia; she’s only been in the country a year. Since the time she was tipped a hundred dollars by a table of French-Canadian hockey players, her idea of a reasonable tip has skyrocketed. She wags Celia’s glass: Refill?
    Celia shakes her head. At the end of this set she’ll have a beer down in the kitchen with George. Before that, though, she’ll phone Rachel. She can’t believe she jumped down her throat over spilled lemonade. She can only think that the heat in their apartment is getting to her.
    R ACHEL AIMS the flashlight in his direction and switches it off and on. Is she signalling somebody? Ron checks his rearview mirrors. Other than a woman climbing into her SUV, the lane’s deserted.
    He has parked next to the dumpster. People park here allthe time, and the streetlight up ahead is burned out, so even with all the windows down he feels invisible. For a change, the landlord isn’t on the porch. Neither are the dogs. It’s just Rachel, by herself.
    “Shine it at your feet,” he says.
    He wishes he’d brought along a pair of binoculars. And then it occurs to him: maybe he has. In the trunk he keeps finding things—nylon cord, a blanket—he can’t remember having put there. He opens the glove compartment and fumbles around. Nope, no flashlight. Only his Perly’s guide and the roll of duct tape he bought to secure the broken rearview mirror.
    He takes out the tape and sets it on the dashboard. “Come on, sweetheart,” he says. Her light seems to intensify and it is from this, rather than from the sudden dimness of the world around him, that he becomes conscious of the power failure. He climbs out of the car.
    Rachel descends the porch steps. “I just want to see!” she calls over her shoulder. Ron starts moving toward her. It’s dark but not pitch black, because of the cars on Parliament. Rachel aims her light that way, then sweeps it past him and looks down her own street.
    He reaches the curb.
    Should he cross? No, he thinks. Yes.
    He takes a step.
    She turns and runs into the house.
    Through the living room window he makes out her staggering beam.
    C ELIA IS wrapping up her set with “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” and Wanda is over by the window, gazing dreamily at the ScotiaBank building, where her married boyfriend works as a security guard, when the