TORONTO: A NOVEL—Chapter 46



“Well,” Linc began, “did you know that someone tried to run down the mayor with his car, just outside of City Hall?  It was a big old Chrysler Imperial—from 1956. ”
     “I see it in the paper,” said Peter, refilling Linc’s cup with more thick, fragrant coffee.  “Somebody doesn’t like the Mayor much I guess!”
     “Nobody likes the Mayor much,” Linc replied, “but most of us don’t try to run over him with cars!”
     “Would put a big dent in your…what is that car you got again?
     “An Austin-Healey.”
     “The little red one, yes?”
     “Yes.”
     “You hit the 300 pound Mayor and boom!” 
     “Boom?”
     “No more Austin-Healey!!” said Peter. “Listen, you want some custard?”
     “No thanks, Peter, I gotta go.  But let me know if you ever see a big black Imperial parked outside.”
     “The one with the gun-sight tail lights?” asked Peter.
     Linc laughed.
     “Nobody can forget those silly gin-sight tail lights!”
 
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     May left for a day’s classes at the School of Architecture and Michael readied himself as best he could to pay the studio visit he had promised Bliss Carmen—no  doubt foolishly—he would make to see more of Homer Rubik’s dismayingly precise and off-puttingly grotesque Old Master drawings and paintings.
     He was strangely troubled by the fact that Bliss Carmen, wasn’t going to be meeting him there.   Not that he was fond of the gargantuan Bliss—not by any means.  But while she and her silly dog, Fish, were every bit as unwholesome to Michael as Homer Rubnik himself was, the last time he was at Home’s studio –if that’s what you’d really call such a malodorous ruin—she did serve admirably as a buffer.  A big fleshy, boisterous buffer between him and her mad painter-lover, Homer.  Michael didn’t relish having to navigate his way alone through Homer’s clenched and horrible pictures, or small-talk his way through Homer’s gnarled silences, but there really didn’t seem to be any way around it.
     At precisely eleven, therefore, he knocked on Homer’s door.
     “Who’s there?” growled a Homer-like voice from somewhere behind the door.
     “It’s me, Homer.  Michael Moskos.  I was supposed to meet you here today at eleven, remember?”
     The door swung viciously open, and there stood Homer  Rubik, rumpled boy-genius, stained and smelling of a combination of oil pigments and the cheap vegetable oil in  which he deep-fried everything at the diner where he  worked part-time.  Homer glared at him.
     “You’re late.”
     “I can’t be late,” Michael replied. “You said eleven and it’s just eleven now.  Look!” he said, thrusting his wristwatch into Homer’s face.  Homer stood gruffly aside and Michael proceeded further into the rank studio.
     “Want anything?” 
     Michael looked quickly around the cluttered space, took in the encrusted coffee-maker and a couple of mouldy-looking cups, and decided he didn’t. 
     “I’m fine,” he said.  “Thanks all the same,” he added quickly, remembering how quick Homer was to take offense.
     “Whatdya want to see?”
     “Whatever you want to show me,’ Michael replied affably.  “Why don’t you show me some of the posters you made when Fish went missing?”
     “Stupid dog,” muttered Homer.
     “Where is Bliss anyhow?” he asked Homer, as offhandedly as he could. 
     “You like Bliss?” Homer asked him suspiciously.
     “Oh, well…yeh, I like Bliss okay, I guess.  I don’t know her very well.  I met her on a streetcar.  Her and Fish.”
     “Dumb dog,” said Homer.
     “But Bliss told me Fish was missing.  Wandered away or something.”
     Homer smirked.
     “He walked onto a subway train waiting at the Spadina station” he said. “Where Bliss lives,” he added.  “Bliss is upset.  Me, I’d be relieved!”
     “So she asked you to make some posters to put up around town.”
     “Near the subways,” said Homer.
     “Any luck so far?”
     “Getting him back, you mean?
     “Well, yes,” said Michael.
     “See, it’d be luck for me if she never got him back!”
     “But you made the posters anyhow,” said Michael  encouragingly.
     “Yeh.”  Homer grinned a most unpleasantly carnivorous grin.  “But I didn’t put the stupid dog’s picture on them.”
     Michael thought this over for a second or two.
     “So, what good are they as posters then?”
     “No good at all, I hope,” said Homer fiercely.  “So listen, do you want to look at some paintings or what?”

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