“I don’t know. It’s possible. You don’t have the best alibi I’ve ever heard. You and Bobbi are getting along all right?”
“Sure.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “But …”
“No but,” I said. “We’re getting along fine. At least, I think we are. Why? Has she said anything to you?”
“No, but she might have said something to her father.”
“They don’t talk much,” I said.
“Well, whatever it is, it’s clear he doesn’t have much use for you — or your friends,” he added with a wry smile.
Our beers arrived, and his hamburger, a fat half-pound charcoal-grilled patty in a crusty Kaiser, with onions, tomato, and mushrooms. He tucked in.
“Good,” he said after a few bites. He ate a few more mouthfuls, drank some beer, wiped mustard off his chin, then said, “Let’s change the subject. How’s your daughter? Hilly, right? Is she back from Australia yet?”
“She’s not due back till the fall,” I said.
“She’s what, sixteen?”
“She’ll be fifteen in August.”
“You must miss her.”
“I do,” I said. “She usually spends a good part of the summer with me. This is the first summer in nine years she hasn’t been with me.” I sipped my beer.
“How’s Reeny doing?” he asked, after washing down a mouthful of burger.
“Fine. She’s still in Europe.”
“But you two are, um, still together, aren’t you?”
“To be honest,” I said. “I don’t really know. We like each other — a lot, I think — and we get along, but the last time we spoke on the phone we both agreed there was something missing. I’m not sure what, though.” Maybe love, I added to myself.
Matthias nodded. “That’s essentially how it is between Bobbi and me,” he said. He gestured toward my almost finished beer. “Want another?”
I shook my head. “Thanks, but I think I’ll call it a night.” I started to take out my wallet.
“My treat,” he said.
I thanked him and left him there with the remains of his burger and his beer.
As I left the pub I saw Eddy Porter sitting on a bench, looking woebegone as he stared out at the boat traffic on False Creek.
“Why so glum, Eddy?” I asked. I should’ve known better.
“Apophis is coming,” he said.
“Who?”
“Not who. What. Apophis is a near-Earth asteroid. It’s going to hit the Earth in 2036.”
“Oh,” I said. “We still have plenty of time to stock up on bottled water and freeze-dried food, then.”
“Won’t do any good,” he said. “It was an asteroid like Apophis that killed off the dinosaurs sixty-five million years ago. Apophis’ll do the same to us.”
“Well, in that case, I’ll immigrate to the moon.” And Hilly. Reeny, too, if she wanted to come. We’d live in a dome and raise hydroponic veggies.
He shook his head. “It’s going to hit the moon, too.”
“Mars, then. Or is it going to hit Mars as well?”
“No. Mars is okay,” Eddy said.
“That’s good to know,” I said. He nodded.
Eddy Porter was employed at the Granville Island boat works, where he’d probably inhaled too much fibreglass solvent. A few years earlier he’d been abducted by aliens who, he said, had inserted an implant in his head, which was no doubt how they kept him apprised of upcoming celestial events. He was harmless. In fact, I often wondered if he was one of the saner people I knew.
“Um, how’s Bobbi doing?” he asked.
“She’s doing okay,” I said. “Thanks for asking.”
“Good thing Arty Smelski happened along in his kayak when he did, ain’t it?”
“Is that the name of the paramedic who found her?” I said. “No one told me. I’d like to buy him a beer.”
“Arty’d let you.”
“Where would I find him?”
“Dunno where he lives,” Eddy said. “But he’s got an old fishing boat in the Harbour Authority marina he’s fixing up to someday retire on. Likely you’ll find him there most days.”
The Granville Island boat works was on the other side of the parking lot next to Bridges, facing Broker’s Bay, where the Wonderlust was berthed. The police had probably interviewed Eddy and his co-workers — or maybe not; it was early days yet — and it was unlikely that I’d learn anything they hadn’t, but it wouldn’t hurt to ask if he’d been in the area the night before and if he’d seen anything.
“Tuesday evening is when my abductee support group meets,” he said, shaking his head.
Don’t ask, I sternly enjoined myself, lest my curiosity about what went on at an alien abductee support group meeting got the better of me. Eddy seemed disappointed. There was nothing, I knew from experience, he enjoyed more than talking about his off-world adventures. He’d even showed me an X-ray once, purportedly of his very own head, and pointed out the tiny smudgy speck that was, he said, his alien implant.
“I’ll ask around,” he said.
“I’d appreciate it,” I said. And left him there, looking woebegone and staring out at the boat traffic on False Creek, waiting for Apophis.
“She was right there,” Art Smelski said, pointing to a spot on the rocky shoreline by the civic marina docks beneath the Burrard Street Bridge. Late evening traffic rumbled high overhead and the gloom deepened as the sun went down over Vanier Park. “It looked like maybe she’d crawled out of the water a bit,” he added, “then passed out. The tide was starting to fall, so it’s a good thing I came along when I did or she’d have been swept all the way out into Burrard Inlet.” He gestured toward the dark expanse of water beyond the civic marina. “I got her out of the water, called 911, then started CPR.”
“You carry a cellphone in your kayak?” I said.
“Sure do. It’s waterproof.”
The shoreline sloped steeply down from where we stood at the edge of the path that looped through the small park called Cultural Harmony Grove, virtually treeless except for a handful of saplings. At that time of night, despite the lights from the surrounding marinas, Smelski wouldn’t have seen Bobbi at all if he hadn’t been on the water in his kayak.
“Do you always go kayaking at eleven at night?” I asked.
“Not always. Depends on which shift I’m working. Helps me relax. Most o’ the time,” he added with a shrug.
“Did you see anyone else nearby? On the path, maybe.”
“Nope. Can’t see the path from down there. And I was kinda busy.”
“Sure, I understand. You saw nothing out of the ordinary at all?”
“Nope. Just your friend in the water.”
“What about on the boats?”
“Nope. It’s fairly quiet that time of night. Sorry.”
“That’s okay,” I said.
“Your friend, is she going to be okay?”
“I think so,” I said.