"I was wondering how long you'd last," Leo said, answering the door with a blinky smile. He was wearing a thick robe, slippers and a pair of oven mitts. "Violet, you are the very colour of your name."
"I've brought supplies," she said, holding forth the goodies.
"Wonderful. I'll put my good teeth in." Violet would have gulped but her saliva reserves had dwindled on the way up. Leo chuckled. "Just kidding. These are all mine."
"Is your oven working?"
Leo looked at his mitts. "The fire irons get hot," he laughed. "Come on in."
The warmth was nothing less than blissful. "What's that delicious smell?" Violet asked. "A candle?" Several candles on the large mantelpiece were lit even though there was still daylight trying to peek in behind the curtains.
"A fruitcake. My niece-in-law sent it to me. I was about to throw the other half on the fire. Care for some?"
"Not even today, thank you."
"Why don't you make yourself comfortable? Have a look around. I'll make you a tea and wait for the compliments."
Leo had an iron kettle over the heat in no time. Violet began to remove layers of extra clothing, investigating. It really was such a man's apartment. Green chairs and a dark leather sofa, heavy burgundy drapes with masculine rope ties. He had a display of model warplanes, shelves of expensively bound books, a cigar compartment in a well stocked liquor cabinet, but few family photos, Violet noted, on the walls or amongst the mantelpiece bric-a-brac.
"Have you been here long, Mr. Finch?"
"Please call me Leo. About four years. Thought it'd be better than a big house with empty rooms and all those stairs. Now I find if I want a breath of fresh air I have to haul my carcass up and down in those elevators. There are people in this building I have no desire to be neighbourly with especially sixteen floors at a time. You're lucky to be near the bottom."
"You have no idea. My sister and her husband own the condo. They're renting it to me for practically nothing."
"Are you sure? Some people will try to pull stuff on family they wouldn't dare with strangers."
"We're very close."
"That's nice. No husband for you yet?"
"Not yet. And you, you live alone?"
"Quite alone. Never married." The phone rang. Leo shuffled over to it and answered, "Yes?" His bushy brow furrowed. "Of course he did, Son of a Gun. Of course you can. Bye." He hung up, shaking his head. "The kid who delivers the paper. Do you get the paper?"
"I hate to buy bad news."
"Well the delivery boy's father left his mother for another woman, but he expects to be treated like King of the Castle whenever he feels like showing up."
"Poor kid. That's too bad."
"Too bad for his father. He parks his Cadillac straight under my balcony." Without further explanation Leo returned to the prior conversation. "Never married. Never had any kids of my own. I probably wouldn't have been there enough for them if I had. When I had the chance to settle down I didn't want to and when I caved no one could be bothered with me."
"I can't believe that."
"Don't worry. I'm not fishing. I'm not flirting either. You're a very pretty girl, Violet, but I always had an eye out for little women, shorter than I used to be, and red-headed if possible."
"I see. Then I'm in no danger."
"None from me."
"Good. I've gotten way too comfortable to deal with a dirty old man."
"I no longer have the energy. Besides, I only chased the girls who didn't run very fast and you look like a sprinter. You know, your hair is the exact colour of this almond." He offered her a bowl of nuts. She dug out a cashew.
"Do you have any family in the city?" she asked.
"That's what the birthday and Christmas cards say, but otherwise I have no physical evidence."
"You mean they don't come and visit you?" Violet found this highly disturbing.
"None but my grandnephew, Jimmy, and that brings us to two of the many blessings I count. Blood's sticky, isn't it? I think the rest of them only check in once in a while so I'll remember them in my will when I kick the bucket. Did I tell you I'm loaded?"
"Your butler did."
"Frankly my kin are a bunch of pains in the keister. Except Jimmy. Look what he sent me for my birthday."
Violet slid to the other side of the couch as Leo went to his wall cabinet. Just then came a pounding on the door.
"Would you, Violet? Just let him in."
In the hallway stood a thirteen year old boy holding three flat balloons. He seemed surprised to see Violet but wasted no time with explanations. He hustled to the kitchen, filled each balloon with water, tied them off and then sped to the balcony doors and wrestled them open.
"Careful of the ice," Leo warned fiddling with the cabinet doors. The boy chucked the balloons over the railing and ran back inside. "If you missed, Ben," Leo said, "I've got some spares from last time. The ones with the pudding."
"Nah, I got him. Thanks, Mr. Finch."
Ben ran out of the apartment and Violet went to shut the balcony doors properly.
"That's Ben," Leo said fondly.
"Yes, we had a nice long chat."
"Has he got a great arm. Too bad for his dad's Caddy. Now for Jimmy's present!"
"When's your birthday?"
"November eleventh. Remembrance Day. Always makes me feel guilty I was never able to serve. Look." He brought a small banged up case over to the coffee table and opened it up to display an antique pistol.
"No danger, hmm?" Violet said.
"All the guts are out. This one's from the 1700s."
"Do you collect only guns or antiques in general?"
"Odd and ends. I like to have things older than I am, and if they happened to have been used during a battle or two then so much the better. Hell of a time shipping this to me what with the world scared half to death about everything."
Violet read the card in the box. It said, "Leave the pigeons alone. Love Jimmy."
"Your nephew doesn't live here?"
"Well he does, but he's busy, you know. Travelling all the time, talking to people who think they're interesting about his eco-friendly greener somethings. Basically, I think he tries to tell people how to get rid of their garbage and not make so much. The kid's all over the place."
"What did you used to do?"
"Nuts."
"No more, thanks."
"No, I was in nuts. Cashews and macadamias. Let's face it, if you're going to own anything that has to do with nuts, go for the big guns. I owned a few plantations with my brother Maurice. He sold his shares to me before he passed away. I only sold the business nine years ago and I've been living off the fat of my old land ever since. What about you? I'd guess you're a teacher. You have the very face of tolerance."
"Customer service."
"Same thing. We're all spoiled brats."
"I'm an event booker-sort-of-planner at The Grand. They rebuilt the old theatre into an event hall for weddings and entertainment functions. I love it. Different people, different projects. Not so nine to five."
"I hear you. I remember that theatre well. I dated an usherette who worked there named Sally O'Banion."
"Sounds like a red-head."
"The reddest. Never saw a film in its entirety while I was seeing her. Guess I thought I was some kind of Cary Grant. I used to love anything with Cary in it. Jimmy Stewart was my favourite. Gary Cooper was all right. Never caught on to Fonda, but each to his own."
"Ever get to the movies these days?"
"It's not easy getting around without a car. One day you get in and you can't see over the steering wheel and you're trying to stick your key into the brake pedal. The cops took my licence away ages ago. Taxis are all right, I suppose, if I'm determined. My nephew hired a driver for me out of his own pocket, but it seemed ridiculous to pay someone to wait around in case I felt like going out so I got rid of him. He also tried to set me up with a care taker, more companion than nurse, but she liked to speak to me in lit-tle over enun-ciat-ed sentences as though I were a child, so while we were out I got lost like one. I took a cab home when she wasn't looking and she spent the rest of the afternoon in a department store asking if anyone had seen 'a lit-tle man about yay high". I waited 'til she wasn't so purple before I got rid of her too."
"You should come and see The Grand sometime, Leo. They tried to maintain the integrity of the original during the renovations but you'd be the authority on that."
"Maybe I will." He closed the lid on his birthday present and gave Violet a wink which signalled it was time for the roast.
After marshmallows, and a lot of Leo's questions about Violet's family, came dusk. "How cold do you think it is out there now?" He asked. "Go and check."
"I would, but you've got a grin on you like it's a ploy to lock me out or something."
"We'll go together," he suggested. Violet's heavy sweater wrap was on the arm of the chair. She put it on and they stepped out onto the balcony. The view was dizzying.
"It's too high," she said. "It's freezing."
"I wonder how fast water freezes at this temperature. I've got some extra balloons. Let's fill 'em up and see if they freeze before they hit the bottom.
"Okay, as long as the coast is clear."
They stepped inside. Leo went into the kitchen and came back with two bulbous half-filled balloons. Back on the balcony, Leo said, "I think you should know something about me before you form the opinion that I'm a kindly old man."
But Violet was concentrating on tying off her balloon. "Here, let me do that one," she said, tackling Leo's.
"Aim for the black Caddy," he said.
Violet did her best to hurl one bomb at its target, then crouched low behind the railing, hiding.
"As I was saying, I think there's something you should know about me," Leo said, sneaking backwards into the apartment.
"What's that?"
He locked her out and said through the door, "I'm a rotten tease."
"Leo!" Violet began to shout, but then sticking her freezing hands into her sweater pocket she found a black felt marker she often used for quick notes. She made a slow demonstration of writing Leo's apartment number on the leftover balloon and then dangled it over the side of the balcony.
"You wouldn't"
"I'm desperate."
"I like you, girl," Leo said and unlocked the door.