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 kinship 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."

No response.

"h.e.l.lo?"

Madison pulled the sun visor down and inspected herself in the mirror. With the handkerchief, she dabbed underneath her eyes, then looked out the pa.s.senger window. A pink foam had formed along the banks of the artificial lake. Leaves, Tim Hortons cups, and refuse from Kentucky Fried Chicken bobbed on the small waves.

"Listen, you two. If it'll cheer you up, I'll jump in that smelly lake right now. Right now. I heard from a guy that a poodle swam in there last fall and it died. Even if that's true, I don't care. It means nothing to me, nothing. Because I love you guys. I love yez. You're my favourites and I hate to see this sorrow. I just hate to see it."

Rajinder pulled up in front of Jeanne's sister's house, a three-storey cream-coloured Cape Cod with two tiny birch trees planted in front. The trees looked so thin and forlorn, Jonas figured they needed hugs. He hopped out of the back seat and proceeded to embrace the first one. It was small so he had to bend low to get under the pokey branches. To his distress, both Rajinder and Madison ignored him.

The front door opened and Katie, in a winter jacket and rubber boots, ran out. Madison went down on both knees to hug the girl, who launched into a stream-of-consciousness speech about Halloween, her new school, finger painting, a kitten named Chris, and the distinct possibility that by this time next year she would have a trampoline.

Katie finished her speech, said h.e.l.lo to Jonas and Rajinder, and yanked Madison by the hand. Jeanne stood in the doorway, wearing a pair of jeans and a black sweater, her blonde hair tied up in a bun. Makeup did not hide the dark shadows under her eyes.

Jeanne and Madison hugged. Jonas insisted Rajinder go next because he wanted to study the interplay between the former lovers. They hugged as well, but not warmly. It was as though they were both worried about the other's hands being sticky.

"You look amazing," said Jonas, as he hurried in for his own hug. He picked Jeanne up into the air for a moment and as she went limp with discomfort he placed her back down on the entrance rug.

67.

the wild things Jeanne invited Rajinder and Madison to sit on the puffy leather couch facing the fireplace and Katie's overflowing toy box. Her new My Little Pony lay on the laminate floor, next to a pile of wrapping paper. They listened to Katie describe the situation at her Montessori kindergarten while wearing a Darth Vader voice-changing mask.

"We play with wood mostly," said Katie, in the voice of James Earl Jones.

Even though this ranked in the top-five most uncomfortable moments of her life, Madison couldn't stop smiling at Katie. For the first time in her four months of pregnancy, Madison felt thrilled to be having a child. A girl, hopefully, with red hair and brown eyes.

And if Rajinder wasn't comfortable with that, she just had to stop caring about him. Now or as soon as possible.

It helped that he had slept with Jeanne. It helped that he had been disingenuous about the Let's Fix It project. He wanted to Fix It because he had, from a certain point of view, caused It.

"We did a pond study last week." Katie nodded her Vader head. "My teacher's name is Mrs. Allen. Lots of the bugs we saw were dead."

Jeanne stood up from her own puffy chair and held a hand out for Katie. "That's great, honey. Now it's time for you to go upstairs and play."

"No." Still in the Darth Vader mask, Katie ran around the coffee table and hopped up on the couch next to Madison.

"Yes, Katie."

She took Madison's hand and squeezed it in hers. "No!"

"Once the adults are finished talking, Madison will come up and play with you."

Katie turned and looked for confirmation with her Vader eyes. "Really?"

"I absolutely promise," said Madison.

The four-year-old pulled off the mask, took her My Little Pony and a copy of Where the Wild Things Are, and started up the stairs. She stopped halfway and looked down. "You better not take forever."

Madison shook her head. "I won't be long."

The door closed upstairs and Jeanne sighed. "Can I get anyone a drink? Beer, wine, tea, juice?"

There was a plate of California rolls on the granite countertop. Jonas sat on a stool and dipped one into a mixture of wasabi and soy. "Your sister got any Scotch?"

Jeanne started around to the open kitchen. "She does, in fact, and no one ever drinks it. Want some?"

"Do I!"

Madison wanted to take this opportunity to say something to Rajinder. Yet she wasn't sure she could articulate it. So instead of speaking, Madison turned and punched Rajinder in the shoulder. Then she wound up and punched him again. "I am sorry, Madison," he said, rubbing the spot.

Jeanne returned to the living room with her own gla.s.s of Scotch. No doubt she had heard and perhaps seen the blows Madison had delivered. Smelling of imitation crabmeat, Jonas plopped down beside Madison on the couch and took a long sip of Scotch.

"So," said Jonas. "It's been ages. How are things, Jeanne?"

She took a long time to answer, which pointed to the absurdity of Jonas's question. "s.h.i.tty, all things considered. You?"

"Can't complain, can't complain."

Madison slid forward on the couch. "Katie seems to be doing all right."

"She still has the nightmares, but yeah. She's doing pretty well."

"Was she in the bedroom when..."

Jeanne nodded.

"I'm so sorry. We all are. It's probably an obvious and annoying thing to say."

Jeanne nodded again.

"Did you receive the letter from the university?" said Rajinder.

"I did. Thanks for forwarding it on."

Rajinder looked at Madison and at Jonas, and used his hands to indicate this was a team effort. "As a community, we have been searching for ways to save the Garneau Block from annexation and ultimate destruction. After some research and a lot of creative thinking on the part of Raymond Terletsky, we have decided to aim for a cultural designation."

"What does that mean?"

"We're not positive yet. Raymond Terletsky and I met with some local architects, a museum consultant, and the guest composer at the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. As a matter of fact, Jeanne," Rajinder leaned back in the couch, as though he were seeking shelter, "we are here to discuss an important matter with you, something we hope you will agree is the best solution for everyone. I would like to buy your house. We would like to buy your house, and transform it into a sort of...a very special place."

Jeanne shook her head and took a sip of Scotch. "I don't get it."