April Wu’s bullet tore a hole through his bent nose. Cud gazed at her stupefied for a moment, then slumped to the floor.
“He had bad chi,” she said. “So do you.”
The pistol was aimed at Lance again!
“It was you all along,” he said.
“I am but one of many.” She barked. “Hand me the manuscript!”
Trash this page!
Flush this manic excursus, a digression from a plot barely coherent to start with. He was wandering off in every direction like a lunatic lost on the sanatorium grounds. Insanatorium grounds.
Point proved, however: When sober, as he was now, nauseated, shaking, skin prickling with the coca-Joneses, Brian wrote crap. If this is what abstinence wreaks on a single Christmas afternoon, what kind of hell would several days of it promise? But he’ll soldier on, stay off the stuff a while, supplies were low.
He must start this chapter over, seek inspiration from the fountain of truth. April Wu will keep her day job at Pomeroy and company but will no longer moonlight at the Valentine Agency–it’s gone out of business. Goodbye, Lance, you arrogant ponce. Live happily ever after, Cud Brown–for you, the rustic embattled poet, are the true hero of this tragedy, its true victim.
Suddenly I’m dining at the best tables, me, Cudworth Brown, scion of an unemployed miner, formerly of the working class myself, surviving on grants and a piddly-ass disability pension. So don’t be surprised I never seen a dinner like that one.
It started off with jumbo shrimp on cracked ice with some wafers and what I guessed was real caviar, though I didn’t want to be naive by asking. And those were only the starters, the whore doovers, as we say on Garibaldi.
I figured the sockeye salmon was the main course, I even took an extra offering, and I was sitting back, thinking about dessert, and suddenly the caterers were bringing out tenderloins and asparagus and baby carrots, new cutlery, the works; it was like the feast had just begun. Man, I was glad I smoked a doobie on the ferry–it gave me the appetite to pound the chow down. I didn’t want it to go to waste; they weren’t handing out doggie bags.
Before I forget, let me go back, there were drinks first, martinis or wine, you had a choice, they were coming around on trays. “Please mingle,” Judge Whynet-Moir said. Mingle. Decoded, he was telling his friends to check out the hick in the red braces. One of these poshes, Shiny Shoes, I call him, some kind of downtown rainmaker, tried to fluff me off. “A peace medallion–I hadn’t realized they were back in fashion.” I told him I also got one tattooed on my ass.
I didn’t mingle, I wasn’t comfortable with all these pooh-bahs. Talked to the other two writers. One came dressed in a sari. She wrote right-wing political commentary, so she was right at home here. The other was Lynn Tinkerson, a dyke who is what they call an important writer, and I told her I intend to read one of her novels.
The table was set with little place cards, a practice I’ve never encountered in four and a half decades of hard living. Rafael Whynet-Moir had done the guy-girl-guy-girl thing and put himself at the far end of the table between the two lady guest writers.
Sitting on my right was a wrinkle-free woman with a ten-inch smile who’d obviously been in the shop for renovations once too often. She told me she’d never met a poet and wanted to know all about it. I was feeling rosy after a couple or three martinis washed down by a fine, crisp Bordeaux, and I told her how during misty shoreline walks my muse would rescue me from the heartsickness of wounded love.
Meanwhile, I am playing left-leg footsie with Florenza LeGrand, Flo she likes to be called. She’d kicked off her sandals, was casually running her toes up my leg. Judge Whynet-Moir would look our way occasionally, smiling, but I read a warning in his eyes.
Sometimes Flo also played handsie, squeezing mine under the big table spread, touching my thigh. I didn’t know she had a rep, I didn’t know anything about her–but I knew the type. Spoiled daughter of the rich, flirts with danger, likes to smoke, drink, and get laid, in no particular order. I was looking forward to tupping a member of the ruling class; she’s rich beyond belief. She might be persuaded to set up a starving poets endowment fund.
You changed my life– that seemed like hoke. I figured she just wanted to bang me. There’s an image in Karmageddon of me eating hair pie, maybe that got to her, but I wasn’t sure it was me made her horny or if she was horny all the time. Her consort kind of answered that question when you saw him over there, tittering with the ladies in his overattentive way. You’ve got to figure Judge Whynet-Moir doesn’t have hair on his ass.
The cosmetic surgery victim to my right asked, “And when did you first decide to become a poet?”
“Madam,” I said, “I was born a poet. We are all born poets. Our first word is poetry. Ma-ma, da-da. Rhyme at its most basic but beautiful to a mother’s ear.” I was doing this mindless rap, with her hanging on every word. “You been there, eh, you got kids?”
“I have,” she said in a kind of heart-fluttery way while, from the other direction, toes were wiggling up my pant-leg.
I went on about how we have to dig through the garbage of our lives to rediscover the poetic talent God gave us at birth. “It got buried in organized religion and spreadsheets and ads for SUVs and all the other shit capitalism throws at you.”
She sat back; it was like I’d slapped her. As the waiter was topping up my Bordeaux, I was thinking I better pull in my ears, slow down. I’d promised my publisher I’d behave myself and not go around ticking off patrons of the arts.
I had to endure Mr. Sarcasm, Shiny Shoes, who was across from me, giving me this, “One of your claims to fame, I believe, involved some extended tree-sitting a couple of years ago.”
Entertain me, clown. Tell me a rollicking story. I said something back to him, I can’t remember. Before we got to the point of tangling asses, Whynet-Moir stood up to toast the celebrities. I drank along with everyone before remembering I wasn’t supposed to.
I got to admit there was a certain class anger at work here. This is how the rich live. Cooked to, catered to, and coddled, while my folks spent their whole lives on the wrong side of the tracks in a depressed mining town and could barely afford pork and beans. And I felt even shittier because I’d been given the role of royal jester, I was being used, patronized, and the hostess planned to use me as her fuck-servant.
And I was willing.
Flo was getting bolder with each refill of her wine–her fingers were no longer grazing, they were sliding up my thigh. I whispered, “Is this cool? I hope your old man doesn’t keep a loaded Magnum in a drawer.”
She came close, her breath hot in my ear. “Don’t worry, he’s a lousy shot.”
I don’t think she saw Whynet-Moir looking at us just then, while her hand was making contact through the fabric with a stiff and unyielding object. Man, she was bold. You ever had a stiff one get caught in your pant-leg? I didn’t want to wait until the book-signing, I wanted to fuck her right then, wanted to get down on the floor with her and fuck her while everybody else wiped gravy from their chins.
But as I was sitting there toughing it out, things got really awkward: Flo caught one of her rings in my zipper. She tugged, and it wouldn’t come free.
Today’s pop-up from Horace Widgeon: Do not over-embellish your main suspect. The experienced mystery reader, aware that too many fingers of suspicion are pointed at some blackguard, will invariably dismiss him from contention, thus narrowing the field in the great battle of wits between writer and reader.
What was the secret message? Did Widgeon suspect that Cuddles was innocent, that the real murderer lurked elsewhere? Brian can see why Widgeon feels sympathy for Cud. He’s human, he has feelings, though he lets the little head do most of his thinking. Under a thin shell of braggadocio, he seems kind of scared. When you go over his story carefully, as Brian had, capturing the hidden essences, you start to wonder if Cud isn’t telling the truth–maybe Florenza was coming on like a ballistic missile.
It wasn’
t right that Cud found himself in such a pickle. Brian would feel terrible if this working-class hero went down for killing Rafael Whynet-Moir, so he’ll dry out, he’ll pull out the stops.
He’d researched Florenza LeGrand, googled her: a teenaged delinquent, a runaway, her parents had to pull her out of an Oregon ashram and deprogram her. A few years later, she got busted in Guadalajara, shacked up with a Mexican dope dealer. It cost mucho dinero for her parents to repatriate her. They plunked her into an elite New England college that doubles as a finishing school. Marriage to the polished, worldly Rafael Whynet-Moir would straighten her out, everyone said.
Reminder: he must ask Special Prosecutor Abigail Hitchins if Florenza remains uncooperative. He must respond to Abigail, whose recorded messages have grown caustic and rude.
Enough of abstinence. He chopped up a snifter. It’s just a party drug, an ice cream habit, coke light, a little fizz to perk him up when worries get him down. He should go out to score another gram, but the thin man was always there, the stalker. Was he to be feared? Were he an assassin, Brian would be dead by now. The man had some business with the author, but what?
Brian’s neighbourhood ATM had turned against him, cancelled their friendship. He’d had to cash in his RRSPs to buy gifts for Caroline and the kids. Flowers for her, roses of love and repentance. Yesterday, Santa’s sleigh–a rip-off artist’s two-ton van–delivered to the backyard a three-thousand-dollar haunted playhouse.
Rubbing his nose, he studied the slumped rider with two arrows in his back. Funny how he looked just like Cud.
The Mormon Tabernacle Choir was coming through the wall, three ships a-sailing in from Room 303. From some nearby slum apartment, children being threatened in song, Santa’s gonna see if they’ve been naughty or nice. In Cantonese. Add to this cacophony: a busker pounding bongos outside. “Books! Books! Books!” Christmas fucking morning at the Ritz.
He was disappointed in April Fan Wu. He’d asked her out for Christmas dinner.
“That might not be a good idea under the circumstances.”
“My circumstances are that I am divorced.”
“My circumstances are that I left Hong Kong to escape from a boss who wanted to have sex with me.”
Brian felt aggrieved that she assumed he, too, was so inclined.
“I’m sorry, but I have plans to be with my partner.”
“I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.”
“She isn’t a boyfriend.”
He’d have looked up one of his ex-illicit-lovers, but he’d lost touch with them. All but Abigail Hitchins, who had gone from promiscuous label whore to machisma-pumping ultra-feminist. She was probably a lesbian now too. That’s what they do.
Brian hadn’t been with a woman since Roseanne. Affairs didn’t seem like fun any more, not since he got divorced; they lacked edge, the sense of illicit adventure. Were Caroline to have him back, he’d never stray, he’s learned his lesson. He will congratulate her for her prize for Sour Memories. He’ll even finish reading it.
It isn’t much consolation, but life is even more difficult for Cuddles.
Not only was her ring snagged on my fly, she couldn’t get it off her finger either–there wasn’t wriggle room. And her old man was starting to look at us sideways, maybe wondering why his wife was eating her dessert left-handed. I was rattled–it’s not like we could casually rise and say, Excuse us, we had a bizarre accident.
The ring, which was gold with an opal, by the way, on her middle finger, got snagged on that little deal you use to pull the zipper up. Its end had broken off. So she whispers, “Fuck, do something.” I scoop a patty of butter and work it around her finger, which finally slides free, and by now I have a boner like the spire of St. Mary’s.
There is a proper genre for the carnal, and it isn’t crime, hectors Widgeon in a finger-wagging sermon about not making a disgusting exhibition of one’s swollen libido to the gentle, mystery-devouring sweethearts who prefer blood-spattered bodies to hot buttered cock. Brian contemplated his cellphone, finally switched it on, dialed, connected with Abigail Hitchins’s machine. “Pomeroy here, diligently returning your calls, and it’s, I don’t know, somewhere around three p.m…”
She came on. “It’s noon. Are you blasted already?”
“On Christmas Day you’re screening your calls?”
“From my mother. In case you forgot, we have a one-week trial starting in February.”
“I got it in my daybook.”
“Did you see my e-mail? A list of facts we’d like admitted. Non-contentious shit, street maps, house plans, dates, times, places.”
Brian vaguely remembered something like that.
“Without admissions this sucker’s going to last two weeks.” A pause. “What are you doing for Christmas dinner?”
“Hiding from the people watching me.” Why does she laugh?
“Yeah, and I’m hiding from my damn mother. Want to get together? We can go over my non-contentious wish list.”
“I’m too broke.”
“I’ll buy. Let’s say seven-thirty, Il Giardino. I’ll phone to confirm. Keep your fucking cell on. Capisce?”
“Capisce.” She was too eager, which was disconcerting. She had, unfortunately, become enraptured with Brian lo those many years ago, and with lamentable intensity. But that was the 1990s, another century. She’d had relationships since, a failed marriage, then five years sleeping with her therapist.
Brian looked out, the bongo busker was still working the street, another at the Keefer corner, doing mime. He was probably in on it with the doorman. The thin man was the leader, but he wasn’t around right now. There was Harry the Need, under Quick Loans, No References Required. He was the only one Brian could trust.
Abigail called right back. “We’re on. You still allowed to drive?”
“Had to sell the Honda to make ends meet.”
“I’ll pick you up, how’s that?”
“No, I’ll get there.”
“Where are you, Brian?”
They always want to know. “Ciao.”
A BLUNDER BAY CHRISTMAS
He was scrambling down in inky darkness, going too fast, slipping on lemons. Suddenly, spread below him, were the lights of a throbbing city with a great cathedral…no, a colonnaded courthouse. He had taken the wrong trail, the one to the precipice. He was falling, falling…
Arthur awoke in fright, took his bearings. It was noon. It was Christmas Day. He was on a couch and the Aeneid was lying open on his stomach. He was in the woofers’ house, with its youthful clutter of art film posters, electronic gizmos, compact disks, Japanese paperbacks. Arthur had proposed to Margaret in this very living room. Clearly she now regretted having signed on to the deal.
This morning, when he tried to make amends for last night’s grand gaucherie by offering to be her kitchen slave, she snapped, “Just get out of here. Get out of the house.” She had spoken to him, however, despite yesterday’s vow never to do so again. That was after she checked his bruises and scratches, scolding all the while, after she drew him a hot bath.
His groping descent from the peak had been aided by the glow from a hotly burning pipe, but he’d lost the trail soon after his last match went out, and was hours working his way downhill. He’d been raked by thorns and low branches, and his clothes were in tatters. Finally, he’d come within shouting distance of the search party assigned to Mount Norbert. Other volunteers had been combing every nook and cranny of the island. Yes, all of Garibaldi had spent Christmas Eve looking for this lost soul. Arthur’s humiliation was spectacular, immeasurable.
The troop that won bragging rights was commanded by Constable Ernst Pound, who loudly announced his triumph by radio phone. “Listen up, folks. Sorry to disappoint anyone, but Mr. Beauchamp has been found by lucky Team Seven. It’s 21:51 hours, and we have him in our lights, he’s coming down the service road near the west entrance of Mount Norbert District Park.”
All this Arthur heard clearly in the cold, still night as
he slogged toward those lights. “Someone better call his wife, she sounded real panicky…Yeah, he looks okay, he has a walking stick, he’s waving.”
Arthur accepted coffee from Pound’s Thermos but refused all other aid, refused bandages, though some scratches were beaded with congealed blood. A dead branch had decorated his left cheek with a painful, cup-shaped smile. Another branch had brought him a thick ear.
He followed Team Seven to the turnoff where they’d parked. “We tracked you as far as the general store,” Pound said. “I figured Mount Norbert, because it’s near there. You got to give advance notice where you’re hiking, Mr. Beauchamp. I have to file a report, a whole lot of people got inconvenienced, and I can’t ignore it.”
Arthur had sat slouched in Pound’s cruiser, not wanting to be seen, ducking as he passed the church, ducking the worshippers leaving after evensong. But neighbours had gathered at his house. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” he repeated as Pound escorted him past them, up the driveway of shame, toward Margaret in the doorway.
Thus was blind Oedipus delivered unto the Furies, to be punished for his unwitting crimes. Arthur had been stupid and thoughtless, and no apology, no explanation was acceptable. She’d been on the verge of cancelling the dinner she’d been four days preparing. “I see this as sabotage. You had better decide whether you’re with me or against me, because I am going to run in this election, and I intend to win. With you or without you.”
He tried to persuade Margaret that while watching eagles sail over the Gwendolyn cliffs, he’d been deeply moved by his love and admiration for her, a soul-cleansing epiphany that had resolved him to support her great democratic endeavour.
“Please don’t patronize me with your bullshit,” she said.
At night, feeling the whip of her silent fury, he’d again slept poorly, and he was glad for this short kip on the woofers’ couch. He was still hurting, especially his right ear, which resembled a chanterelle mushroom. He stood and stretched. He had best rise, prepare himself for the gala dinner–it was to start early, at four o’clock, so everyone could make the late ferry. No point in trying to hide the scratches on his face. He’ll make a joke of it, entertain these defenders of the wilderness with his tale of surviving it.
Kill All the Judges Page 8
