I worked on my
review of Shab-e She’r and in the evening took a copy with me to continue on it
from work.
I headed out at
17:45 but was halfway between O’Hara and Brock on Maple Grove when I realized
that I’d forgotten to put my denture in, so I u-turned and went back home. My
neighbour Benji tried to start a conversation with me when I got home and I
should have explained that I was rushed but instead I kind of rudely ignored
him.
I was riding east
along Dundas and had just passed a female cyclist when a cab cut me off and
pulled over to the curb. I said, “Jesus Christ!” and squeezed past to his right
while the female cyclist went left and called to him that he wasn’t supposed to
park there. She got ahead of me because of that but I passed again shortly
afterwards.
Despite the delays
I was still fifteen minutes early for work. The instructor was a young woman
named Brianne Service who didn’t look much older than her students and who
looks a bit like Catherine O'Hara. I assume she's Irish. I see from her
Facebook page that she graduated from OCADU in 2011 and got her Master of Fine
Arts degree last year. She's originally from Hamilton and her work mostly
consists of stylized architectural paintings of cathedrals combined with
nature.
She had me do
short poses for the first half of the class. She told one of her students that
she would like to have gestures for the whole class but it’s hard work for a
model. I said, “Especially for an old model!” I passed her on my way to the
washroom during my first five-minute break and she asked me if I ride a bike.
It turns out that it was her I’d passed and who'd yelled at the cab driver. She
explained that she lived for a while in LA and learned how to curse out bad
drivers.
At the end I told
her that in my 35 years of modelling she was the first instructor that I've eve
met on a bike. She said she lives right on Dundas in the west end and so it’s
convenient for her to cycle to work. I told her that I’m on the north side of
Queen and so it’s convenient take Dundas on my way downtown but that to come
home I go along Queen. She said she’s afraid of Queen because she's afraid of
being doored. I was surprised that it's never happened to her. She said she got
hit by a car while walking in Hamilton though.
As I was unlocking
my door a big guy with a beard asked me for change. I said, “Sorry” and then he
told me, "I think I know you. Is your name Christian?” I couldn’t place
him and asked, “Where do I know you from?” He said, “Do you know Paul?” “Do you
mean Cad?” He nodded and said he was Peter. He was starting to ring a bell. I
asked if he was the one they call “Pete the Gypsy” and he said he was but
doesn’t like being called a Gypsy. He says he identifies as an Anglo. He said
he just saw Cad. He was with his girlfriend Goldie. Peter was just coming out
of a soup kitchen when he said hi to them but Goldie had said, "We don't
know you and we don't want to know you!" I’ve never heard Goldie say
anything like that but Peter says he gets bad vibes from her. I told him I
think she’s the nicest girlfriend Cad’s ever had. We chatted for about ten
minutes. He seems pretty down and out and might be homeless.
I had a late
dinner and watched an episode of Perry Mason. A blonde named Sheila returns
home to find that her roommate, another blonde named Enid has attempted suicide
with sleeping pills because Charles, her boss/boyfriend, for whom she and
Sheila work as a secretary and receptionist, recently ran off to get married to
another blonde named Anne. Sheila calls for emergency medical assistance and it
looks like a doctor came along with the ambulance and treated her at home.
Sheila talks with Enid who says she’s not going to give up on getting Charles
back. The next day a man named Arthur comes to see Charles. Enid comes to his
office and announces him while secretly turning on the intercom at his desk.
Arthur claims he publishes a magazine called “Expose”, which seems to be just a
front for a blackmail operation. He shows Charles mugshots and fingerprints
from Anne’s criminal record and offers to sell for $30,000 the space in his
magazine that those shots would otherwise occupy. Arthur gives Charles a week.
Charles gets in touch with the Paul Drake Detective Agency and asks him to
confirm if the mugshots are really Anne’s. Paul comes to a wedding reception at
Charles’s place to get a sample of Anne's fingerprints. Perry Mason and Della
Street are also guests at the party and they are surprised when they see Paul
slip Anne’s cigarette lighter into his pocket. The next day Paul confirms with
Charles that the prints match and that Anne spent a year in prison. Charles
gets a call from Arthur who tells him to bring the money to the Valley Motel
and to register as Thomas Walsh. Charles puts the money and a gun into a
briefcase. When he arrives the desk clerk tells him his room is already
reserved but as soon as Charles walks in, Arthur is waiting for him behind the
door with a blackjack. Arthur knocks him out and takes the money. When Charles
comes to he finds his own gun wrapped in a towel and the towel has a bullet
hole. The motel rooms are joined by a shared bathroom. Charles walks into the
adjacent room and finds Arthur dead. Next to the body he finds one of Anne’s
earrings. The clerk walks in to see Charles with the body and calls the police.
When Lieutenant Tragg arrives, Charles, I guess to protect his wife, confesses
to killing Arthur. In the back of Tragg’s car, Charles shoves the earring deep
into the back of the seat. Mason goes to see Anne and she admits to having been
in prison. She says Arthur had also been blackmailing her. Tragg finds the earring
in his car. Mason talks to the motel clerk who tells him that a woman used to
call Arthur every day. In court a forensics expert says that the towel that had
been found in the motel room had a strand of hair from a peroxide blonde that
is naturally a brunette. The camera shows all three blondes, Sheila, Enid and
Anne sitting side by side. The clerk is put on the stand and he points out
Sheila as having been a frequent visitor to Arthur’s room. Sheila shouts that
she didn’t kill him and that they were only partners. Arthur was alive when she
left the motel. Later Anne comes to the hotel and tells the clerk she was the
brains behind the operation and wants the money that he took. He pulls a gun on
her and the cops walk in to arrest him. It was a sting. The night of the
murder, the clerk had walked into Charles’s room, taken the gun from the bed,
saw Arthur through the door with the money, used a towel as a silencer and shot
him.
Sheila was played
by Peggy Knudsen, who played Mona Mars in The Big Sleep.
Enid was played by
Barbara Baxley, who was Tallulah Bankhead’s roommate for many years. She played
Sally Field’s mother in Norma Rae. Marlon Brando called her a “jewel encrusted
grudge collector” whatever that means.
Anne was played by
Mari Aldon, who was born in Lithuania but grew up in the States. She starred
mostly in B movies like Mask of Dust.
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