Northern Exposure

by Michael Kilian

  “You can have all night,” she said, smiling less than pleasantly, moving quickly away to a noisy group gathered by one of the tables.

  “So tell me something,” Spencer said, as Showers took the girl’s stool. Showers hesitated, taking a sip of his wine.

  “The private agenda at the summit conference will include the president’s voicing his extreme displeasure at the French for selling arms to the new regime in Panama.”

  “According to?”

  “Unattributed,” said Showers. “Deep background.”

  “Fair enough. How long have the Frogs been selling guns to the Panamaniacs?”

  “They just closed a deal on new fighters, first line fighters.”

  “Hmmmm. Anything more?”

  “That’s enough.”

  “Certainly is. What brings you in here?”

  “I need some advice. I’d like to find someone, and I don’t know how. A woman.”

  “You could have had Sweets, there. She’ll hop in the sack for any dip. Foreign affairs is her beat, and she works her beat.”

  “No. I don’t mean that. I want to locate an old friend from high school. I haven’t seen her for years.”

  “And you’re in charge of the reunion committee?”

  “I haven’t heard from her since 1963. Her name’s Felicity Stuart. You might remember her. She was in my class at Braddock. A cheerleader. Auburn hair. Green eyes. Very beautiful.”

  “Dennisovitch, I can’t even remember the name of the first girl I fucked, and she was a cheerleader, too. Remember everything else, though.”

  “Jack, I haven’t the faintest idea how I might go about looking for Felicity. I thought you might have a suggestion.… I have reason to believe she may be in trouble.”

  Spencer swirled the ice and whiskey in his glass a moment. “Write to the registrar’s office at her college. She went to college?”

  “Of course. Scarborough State. It was a teacher’s college back then.”

  “Better, try the alumni association there. And the morgue files of the Braddock Wells Gazette, and some of the other Westchester papers. But the best thing for you to do would be to hire a private eye. This sort of thing and divorces is what they mostly do. I can recommend the best. A local gentleman named Stansfield Joyce. Chesley used him to get the goods on me. I think of him warmly every time I make out the child-support check.”

  “They’re expensive, private eyes.”

  Spencer shrugged. “If she’s in trouble.”

  “Stansfield Joyce,” Showers repeated.

  “A gentleman of color. The son of a bitch is really good. If you copped a feel in a drive-in in 1957, you could give him the girl’s first name and in a week he’d be back to you with her bra size.”

  Another woman came up to Spencer, a tall, olive-skinned brunette with enormous breasts. He patted her bottom, too.

  “Thank you, Jack,” said Showers, quickly finishing his wine.

  “Anything for a Westchester County man.”

  “I’ll see you again, before I leave for Canada.”

  “Please do. Cheerio.”

  As Showers stepped out onto the street, he remembered that Spencer was rumored to have a terminal illness. But they had been saying that for more than a year.

  Macoutes emerged from the Peel Metro station into the afternoon gloom. The international news stall did not have a San Francisco paper, but there were some copies of the Los Angeles Times, and one of them had the story. The information it contained was the same. Police had identified the man as a G. Brown, but there was no address. The paper carried a picture of Hope Stuart, taken from her driver’s license. She was very pretty.

  Macoutes sighed, and walked out. Now he would have to ask Hillion what to do.

  Arriving home, Showers found Marie-Claire angry at him.

  “You are late,” she said.

  He set his briefcase down by the hall table, glancing at the mail. So many bills.

  “I said, you are late,” she repeated. She was wearing a new cocktail dress he had seen advertised in Town & Country not long before.

  “Marie-Claire,” he said, sighing, “you stay an extra night in New York without letting me know until five in the morning, and now you complain because I’m a half-hour late.”

  “Almost an hour, Dennis. We have a reception to go to at the embassy.” With Marie-Claire, there was only one embassy in Washington. She might turn down an invitation even from the Belgians, but never from the French.

  “The reception is not at the embassy,” he said. “It’s at the home of the cultural attaché. It’s to do with some wretched little Cubist exhibit I have absolutely no interest in going to.”

  “If you will not come with me tonight I will go by myself.”

  “Marie-Claire. Please. For once can we just stay home? Just you and me, husband and wife?”

  “You said I was the perfect wife because I was so willing to go to parties.”

  “I said you were the perfect diplomatic wife. Not the domestic variety.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Damn it, Marie-Claire! You know I have a lot of reading to do on Canada. This party is a waste of time. I have to stay home.”

  “So stay, chéri.”

  She turned and leaned over to pick up her evening bag. She must have spent a great many recent afternoons sunning herself to get that tan. “Je suis tres pressée, Dennis.”

  “All right, go, Marie-Claire. The hell with it.”

  She hurried past him. He waited until she had almost reached the door.

  “I think we’ll be going to Ottawa much sooner than expected,” he said.

  She froze. “Yes? How soon?”

  “I’m not sure. In a few weeks.”

  “But they said not until late October!”

  “Everything is subject to change, Marie-Claire. Comme toujours.”

  “Buy why? What is happening?”

  He wondered how much he could trust her not to reveal in cocktail-party chatter. “There’s a high-level interest in my going there soon. The White House. If you like, you can stay on here for awhile, but I must get up there soon.”

  “Is there some trouble in Canada?”

  “Yes. A lot.”

  “How does it involve you?”

  “It involves the United States. There’s talk of civil war.”

  She grimaced, then smiled at him in a vague way and gave him a fluttering wave of her hand. “A tout à l’heure,” she said.

  When she was gone, he went quickly to his study and typed the letter to Scarborough State University, using State Department stationery in the hope it would encourage speedy attention to his request. Then, feeling reckless, he decided to postpone dinner and make a gin and tonic instead. The Washington Post was still in the living room, unread because of the press of time. Sipping his drink, he picked it up and learned that the prime rate had dropped, but only slightly. Unemployment was up, while the nation’s leading economic indicators were down. The president had thrown a party for Frank Sinatra. There was a leak from stored chemicals near Buffalo. Crime was up in the District of Columbia. There had been another horrible shotgun sex murder in California. Showers started to read the story, then put the paper down, disgusted with himself for such a ghoulish interest. He would go out and mail the letter now.

  As he started down the brick sidewalk toward the corner mailbox, he heard footsteps behind him, hurrying to catch up.

  “Mr. Showers!”

  “Alixe.”

  She was wearing a thin white dress with a low neckline and a full, billowy skirt. She was as tan as Marie-Claire, and the sun had made blond streaks in her light brown hair.

  “I’m just going to mail a letter,” he said.

  “I’m off to Pizzeria Uno for another dinner uno. By the end of the summer, I’ll be able to get a job as a circus fat lady.”

  “You’re a long way from that,” he said, as they resumed walking.

  “Why, thank you, Mr. Showers. Did
you have an interesting day?”

  “Indeed. I even stopped at a bar on the way home. I don’t know what’s coming over me. Mid-life crisis, perhaps.”

  “I’m having one myself. Four years at Smith. Two years in Europe. Two years at Georgetown. Now I’m finally ready to get on with the business of being a woman and I find that in less than five years I’m going to be thirty—over the hill.”

  “Some hill.”

  “Thank you again, Mr. Showers. Why are you going to mail that now? There’s no pickup until nine-forty tomorrow morning.”

  He looked at the envelope he held so carefully in his hand. It seemed to have a magic feel to it, an object with celestial properties to break the bonds of time.

  “I just want to make sure that I actually mail it,” he said. “I’m doing something sort of crazy. I’m …”

  They ducked beneath the low limb of a large tree, its mass of leaves heavy with the musky scent of summer.

  “You’re writing a fan letter to Catherine Deneuve,” she said.

  He smiled. They were at the mailbox. He dropped the letter down the chute and let the lid shut with a loud, decisive thunk. “Voilà,” he said, mostly to himself.

  “Well, have an interesting evening, Mr. Showers,” she said, starting down the hill toward M Street.

  “Alixe.”

  “Yes, Mr. Showers?” Her large brown eyes were smiling at him, more than her lips.

  “Mrs. Showers is away for the evening. May I join you in a pizza?”

  “I’d be thrilled, Mr. Showers. You can tell me all about your crazy letter.”

  As they continued down the hill she slipped her hand inside his arm. Alixe had a lovely fragrance about her, despite the heat of the evening.

  He was able to obtain a table in a corner away from most of the youthful din. He supposed there wasn’t anyone else in the place over thirty. In a way, that helped in his telling of his story about Felicity. He felt less sheepish about recounting romantic nights after high school basketball games. “I don’t think I’ve had pizza in fifteen years,” he said, trying to cope with it neatly.

  “It’s called Chicago style,” Alixe said. “Deep dish.”

  “Where I grew up in Westchester, we had the very thin kind. All very stringy and gooey. Very Italian. There were a great many Italians in Westchester. In the 1950s, they served something of the same role there that black people did in the South.”

  Alixe was not interested in such sociology.

  “There’s something I still don’t understand about Felicity,” she said.

  “You don’t understand why I’m so anxious to find her, just because I had one badly remembered phone call.”

  “On the contrary, Mr. Showers. I understand that perfectly, and I think it’s very charming. What I don’t understand is why you cut yourself off from her in the first place.”

  “It wasn’t anything that deliberate. We just drifted apart. I went to New York City, then Bonn. She went to Scarborough. After a while, there didn’t seem any point to keep on writing.”

  “You could have looked her up when you got back from Germany.”

  “I know. I should have. I’ve thought about that.”

  “If you had, you might have married her instead of Mrs. Showers.”

  “I’ve thought about that, too.”

  “Pardon me if this sounds impertinent, Mr. Showers, but I’ll bet you’ve been thinking about that for days. It’s obvious you loved Felicity very much.”

  He smiled, sadly. “It was just the wrong time. Most are.”

  Momentarily, she looked deeply into his eyes, then glanced down, and away. “Let’s go for a walk along the canal,” she said. “I want to ask you about the rest of my life.”

  It was dark by the river, and the path was deserted, but whatever danger that presented he kept from his mind. She had almost casually slipped her hand in his, and it was as though he were twenty-five again, or she much older. She had not an insubstantial mind. When she was still in her teens, she had asked him to prepare a list of one hundred books she should read in her lifetime. Although his selections included T. E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom and Xenophon’s Anabasis, she had read them all and more, learning more from some of them than he had.

  Her thoughts this evening were not so weighty. By the time they reached the boathouses, they had narrowed the choices for her future to becoming a reporter for The Washington Post, a spy for the CIA, a boutique owner on Cape Cod, or the captain of a Chesapeake Bay skipjack. “And I’ll probably just end up going on to law school and joining my father’s firm,” she said.

  He let her talk and said nothing, content with the touch of her hand and her fragrance, still flattered by her youth and attention. He wondered if he was feeling something more than that, then remonstrated with himself for the notion. A “golden girl of the beach” she might be, but not his. He had lost Felicity, and how many others, because of his ambition and insensitivity, his hurry. Now time was exacting an ironic penalty. He was too old for the golden girl, even if, flirtatiously, she might have him. He must content himself with being the husband of a baron’s daughter.

  They stopped. The river was a blackness in the starlight.

  “We’d best get back,” he said.

  She stared at him a moment, then dropped his hand. “Yes, Mr. Showers. I suppose we should.”

  Outside her parents’ gate, she touched his hand again briefly, but was through the door before he could think to say a word.

  Marie-Claire was home, waiting for him on the staircase. She was wearing a peignoir, and sipping from a small glass of dark red wine. “‘Stay at home,’ you said, mon cher.”

  “How was your ‘very important’ party?” he asked.

  “Merveilleuse. Several people there said some very nice things about you. Including Arthur Jordine.”

  “He just appreciates my taste in women.”

  “He drove me home.”

  “Is he upstairs?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Never mind. You didn’t tell him about the rush on my posting, did you? I want that very much to come through channels.”

  “Of course not. But now, where have you been, monsieur de la maison? Out cheating on me?”

  “Hardly. I went for a pizza with Alixe Reston.”

  “Alixe is becoming very much the grown woman. Soon she will have many men cheating on their wives.” Marie-Claire stood up, and reached for his hand. “But come along, chéri. In a moment I will have you the most happy of husbands.”

  “Marie …”

  “The name is Marie-Claire. Come, I will do something to help you remember.”

  She set down her wine glass and at once began to pull off his clothes. By the time they reached their bedroom and the large canopied bed, he had put Alixe Reston from his mind.

  “Will you remember it now, mon petit chou?” she said afterwards as they lay on their backs sweating. “My name?”

  “Perhaps you should remind me some more.”

  She burst into her musical, annoying laughter. “Oh,” she said. “Remind, indeed. I forgot to tell you. A woman just called for you.”

  “A woman? Who?”

  “I do not know. She wouldn’t say. It was long distance and it was a bad connection. I told her there was no one here named Toby and she hung up.”

  5

  The grimy flat Guy Porique had taken under the name of Abraham Chomsky was small, dark, and cramped, overlooking a narrow ill-lit street. There were cockroaches, and worse. But he wouldn’t have to endure it much longer; a few more weeks at the most. And the wretched place suited his mood, one of despondency and frustration relieved only by moments of drunken oblivion. And by other men’s writings.

  He sat in the room’s only decent chair by the side of the dirty window, inconspicuous, yet able to keep a glimpse of the street below. As in all slums, it was fairly busy with pedestrian traffic, especially with so many people out of work, but no one Porique considered suspicious. There w
as a loitering youth, no doubt a Papineau Fils sent there by the cretinous young Macoutes. No great worry.

  If only Pierre Hillion were not in jail. The old man was dead, the only person of real intellect and true moral purpose involved in this affair—except for Porique himself. Hillion, intelligent if not very trustworthy, would be in prison for at least three more years. Porique dared not go near him. The rest of the Papineau Fils seemed just so many thugs and children, most of them psychopaths. Macoutes’ girl friend reminded Porique of a rabid wild animal, an analogy he regretted. He had a passion for the innocent creatures of the wild. It was unkind to compare them to such humans.

  Those thugs and children were all he had, though, his only instrument of state, his only political power, the single tool left to him to work his great design. And, though he feared for his life every time he was in their midst, the Papineau Fils were his only protection. The Canadian authorities were trying to detain him under the War Measures Act. He had seen an RCMP circular with his name and picture on it. Harry York, that Francophobe sloven of a prime minister, no doubt had something more drastic in mind for him. When Porique had himself been a member of Parliament, he had respected York’s intellect and enjoyed their frequent jousting in debate. But he had disliked the man for his prejudices, and now he hated him for them. He would just as soon see Harry York dead, or so he kept proclaiming to himself. He was still not sure. That was the one great imponderable of this terrible, fantastic scheme. Would Guy Albert Porique, savior of the Canadian wild, protector of innocent creatures, foe of savagery in all its forms, perpetrate so bloody and murderous yet so necessary a deed? Could he? Was it within his moral capabilities?

  And if he could, and would, and did, what then? Was there any escape from the cataclysm his act would bring on? If he were to perish, who could take his place? Those in the west had no interest in Quebec or its salvation. Certainly no one could look to René Levesque and his marshmallow moderates to forge the future Porique and the old man had envisioned, had prepared for. Yet, if Porique was to live, how could he do what must be done?

  He lighted a cigarette, coughing. He rose and began to pace the room, reminding himself of the caged animals he so hated to see in the world’s zoos. Already it had become such a habit with him that he was wearing a clean path in the dirt-encrusted rug.