The waiting list was long, Jeremy acknowledged. “But for you, it’s a phone call away. Is this the phone call?”
No, no. There was the dream. The Professor had wanted to tell Jeremy about that for a long time. It just happened to be the night. “Sorry about the hour,” the Professor said.
“No problem. Dreams will happen when they happen.”
The other reason was more mundane. “Happy Birthday,” the Professor said.
“You’re getting old. My birthday isn’t for two weeks.”
The Professor waited for him to figure this part out.
Hands on her belly, Hélène had given him life. Three in the morning, the middle of a hot summer. Given life as she touched the chord connecting her to Jeremy and weaving them both into a much longer chord. Two weeks before the umbilical would be severed, that longer chord was as taut as it had ever been, strung tight between heritage and legacy.
They said goodnight and the Professor hung up. He stood and stretched, looked out at her view another time. Swept his eyes from the islands to the Sound to the mountains. All the way from left to right. Further. To his own forest that surrounded his own house. To the forest that formed a thick wall between his house and his neighbour.
His neighbour was up too, it seemed. Just as he looked from the southwest to the north, just as his eyes reached the trees on his own property, an orange light winked on in the Beale household. Four-thirty in the morning, thought the Professor. No rest for the wicked.
But he smiled, thinking that. He smiled thinking of it as something he would have said to Dante at one time. He would have said that, and Dante would have shot back a response. Sharp and mean and funny, laying out a knight fork on the Professor’s rook and king. Battling across the chessboard in his explosive fashion, quiet and understated for a long time, with moments of spiking action, throwing long, creative assaults up both flanks at once.
The Professor continued to smile, standing there, his eyes back on Hélène’s view. The two of them, neighbours, contemplating this same dark vista.
Maybe thinking about the same kinds of things.
The flight was brutal. The trip had been a terrible idea to begin with but the flight was bloody awful. Arrived at 1350 Vancouver time, fifteen minutes late. Two percent of total flight time from Paris, granted, but without sleep. Not a second’s worth of doze. Miserable.
Dante was the first passenger out of First Class. The flight attendant was waiting at the hatch with his black leather Hermès carry-on bag, as instructed. She held it out for him like somebody giving water to a marathon runner. He took the bag and mumbled thanks, then staggered up the ramp and into the terminal. Tired, nothing to show for a week. Furious with himself.
He’d had two hours of sleep in the past forty-eight, and those were in the British Airways First Class Lounge at Heathrow. He couldn’t imagine what had gone wrong on that bloody airplane. Crocketts removed, traveller shoe-trees in. Blackout eye patches strapped on, neoprene gel-pack neck brace in place. First Class chair fully reclined, Tubular Bells on the Discman, Halcion ingested with glass of warm milk made with a drop of vanilla extract as he had requested.
Not a goddamned wink. Not a minute of undertime. It was all overtime. He hovered above sleep, conscious of sleep. He lay on his seat, conscious of each cushion. He raced above the clouds, and the land below streamed through his mind. Some strange visual fixation he could not expunge. It was like a fever dream. Hedgerows and ditches and roads and little houses flying past inside his eyelids. He was being tortured, strapped to the bottom of a crop duster. Off the continent it switched to water, which was worse. Now the sea went streaming by in one long unbreakable wave. Bits of foam spray flew towards him, fell away.
Somewhere over Kangamiut, bloody Greenland, almost beside himself, he asked for a thermometer.
“Are you sick?” the attendant asked, bringing it back. She leaned over, a little close.
“I rather think I need the temperature to answer that question,” Dante snapped. The attendant retreated.
Normal. Completely bloody normal. What now? He hated reading novels on flights; he never finished them and never got around to them later. Hated movies for being stupid.
He had the girl bring over a cup of chamomile tea and every bloody newspaper on the airplane. He read news for an hour. Most of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the International Herald Tribune and the European. And for all that effort, he couldn’t have repeated the details on a single top story for a tax tip worth a year’s revenue.
He tried sleep again. What else was there to try? There was no part of the holiday he wished to replay in his mind for amusement. And so the waves screamed by in the blackness, so close it seemed the salt was drying his face. He tore off the eye patch. He had to fight the urge to rush the cabin hatch. Dive out the bloody door and into that mocking sea.
“Welcome back, Mr. Beale.”
Maurice was waiting outside customs. An ape of a man, thought Dante. Maurice was apparently some kind of martial arts expert in his spare time; all Dante knew for sure is that he came highly recommended by the same agency that had headhunted Philip out the door to Microsoft and that he was so chiselled, he had definition in his ear muscles. Still, to his credit, his new EA sensed the prevailing mood and did not ask about the holiday. The holiday everybody at the office had undoubtedly been talking about for the past week, getting no work done whatsoever.
“Kind of last minute.” “Never known him to take time off.” “I heard France.” “All alone?”
No questions. Maurice proved smart enough to sniff the wind and shut up immediately. He took Dante’s bags and they walked quietly out of the airport into a scorcher of a summer day. A limousine was waiting, driver at the open side-door.
“Where’s the Jaguar?” Dante asked, trying to keep his voice down. He hated limousines too, just that moment.
The fuel injectors were being replaced, as it happened. Some cretinous vandal squeegee kid had gotten into the tank. The cops called it “yuppie monkey wrenching.” They thought the perp probably used Nutella.
“What the …,” Dante said. He was processing a lot, standing in this beating sunshine on the sidewalk outside the limo. He turned to Maurice. “Terribly sorry,” he said. “I’m a bit tired, but what in the name of Christ is Nutella?”
Maurice explained that it tasted like hazelnuts and chocolate and that you normally spread it on toast. It also happened to make just about the best fuel-injection magneto plugging system the mechanic had ever seen.
“Enough!” Dante said. Hand up. Please, no more. His head was throbbing.
In the limo he kept his eyes closed all the way from the airport to as far as the foot of Granville Street. There he tried opening his lids a crack but kept his aching head very, very still.
“All right,” he said to Maurice. “Commence talking.”
Nothing major to report, and Maurice had thought to leave all of tomorrow and Friday morning clear of appointments. The chiselled one was going up in Dante’s books. Friday afternoon, however, was full. “Regular squash game at noon, yes-no?” Maurice said.
Dante said yes. He’d bloody well better be feeling right by then.
Bankers at two. Marketing veeps at three. Regional heads had a conference call on at four, a bad time for the guys down East but the boss didn’t take a week off very often. Five was a reception for some mucky-muck or other. Seven dinner with…
There was more, but Dante was using efficient listening skills now. The tone of voice revealed the facial expression, and the facial expression revealed whether he needed to know more. In most cases, he judged from Maurice’s tone, it was not crucial that he know more. Not now.
The driver took his bags into the bedroom. Maurice gave him his PDA, all his appointments scheduled. “The reminder alarm is set,” he warned.
“How do I turn it off?” Dante asked.
“I don’t think I will tell you that,” Maurice said, testing the waters with a
little assertiveness.
Still not a word about the holiday.
“It was fine,” Dante said. He had hung up his suit jacket and poured himself a cold glass of water, slugged back three Tylenol. Sleep was suddenly right there. Coming towards him. His mood improved with its advance.
“I’m sorry?”
“My holidays,” Dante said, yawning. His headache already diminished. “They were perfectly delightful. I had a very relaxing time.”
“Burgundy, was it?” Maurice asked politely.
“Yes, indeed. Gorgeous country. Really quite exquisite.”
Maurice nodded and manufactured a pleased expression. “That’s great, Mr. Beale. Really super.”
At last, Dante slept. Fifteen pure hours. Deep, deep under, not a fragment of dream. He woke at four in the morning, not fresh exactly, but alive. Functioning. He walked through the darkened house to the kitchen. He poured himself a glass of orange juice and went out onto the deck. The forest swept away black to the water.
He drank down the juice in one pull, went back in and automatically started coffee. It was early, even by Dante’s standards, but he was thinking he might as well get back in gear. He walked back onto the porch to look out into the darkness while the coffee brewed.
Dive back in, he thought. That was the ticket. Dante let his thoughts run naturally back to corporate matters. It was a busy time for them, in fact. Next year would be the year of the Eastern Seaboard. They had strat-plans laid out for Boston, New York, Washington, Philadelphia. A grand unfurling of over thirty locations, scheduled over an eighteen-month period. Everybody was going to be busy, no time for distractions.
Maybe he would sell Gerriamo’s, Dante thought. Quietly. Sell it with the land. He’d talk to somebody about Asian interest.
Dante went back into the kitchen and considered the pot of coffee, now brewed and ready for pouring. The black liquid heaved in the decanter. It was still very early, wasn’t it? Or very, very late depending on how you looked at it. He was considering that he had no meetings today and suddenly felt like having a sip of wine instead. Odd impulse that. Must have something to do with the flight.
He tried to push the thought aside, taking the coffee decanter in his hand. After all, he thought, carrying a full cup back out to the porch, there had eventually been good reviews. Mustn’t forget that. And they hadn’t begun until after Papier was gone. Dante nodded to himself. Exactly, I might well have thought of it ten days ago, saved myself the bloody … Never mind. The raves started as soon as they brought in … (and then he blanked on the name of the chef they had hired at great expense to replace Papier after the opening).
Reno was it. Renko?
Anyway, he turned out to be worth every dollar it cost to move him in from New York on short notice. Worth every dollar for those reviews alone, impossibly glowing. And the Beale name got mentioned now too. It was like Inferno had invented New Coke then doubled back to Coke Classic and managed to increase market share in the process. He head-faked them. And here he was with—What was his name? Some bloody Italian handle. Rezno. Rinko—and the guy was a large degree easier to get along with than that merry, goddamn prankster son of the outdoors enthusiast living next door.
Dante put his coffee down on the porch railing, unsipped. He was all tense again, tired and wide awake.
A glass of wine would go down really well now, in fact. Maybe two. Maybe he’d unofficially extend the holiday another twenty-four hours. Maybe he’d just clean out the system with a bottle of something very, very nice. Go back to bed. Crash another twelve hours. Wake up purified. Start fresh. Newly minted mean on Friday morning.
It was so hot. He let his eyes sweep the horizon, the mountains down across the water, all the way to the southwest and then up through the forest to his left. The forest separating his property from Papier the Elder.
And he was up too. The orange light of his living room winked through the trees. Dante stopped drumming his fingers on the rail and considered this light. He looked at his watch again, knowing well the time by now. He went down to the basement, to the wine cellar. He ran his finger along the bottles. What had they liked to drink together? Dante could hardly remember—had it been that long? A year? More, certainly. Two years even. Claret, wasn’t it?
Dante’s finger stopped on the bottom of a Latour. A lot of claret for the old nutcase, he thought. Still, he pulled the bottle down, climbed slowly back up to the kitchen and found two glasses.
It was a firm knock. An aggressive triplet with the knuckles that gave the Professor a start. Not from the front door, but from the steps up to the deck just over to his right. His head snapped around, pulled off the view.
Neither of them said anything right away. Dante was nodding slowly like the scene was exactly as he had anticipated. Both of them sleepless in the middle of a goddamned heat wave. The Professor’s expression was bending involuntarily to amusement. Dante had pulled on some kind of Hawaiian shirt and white shorts. He really looked much better in a suit.
Dante climbed the steps very slowly, a wine bottle under one arm, the stems of two wine glasses clenched between his fingers. When he was a few feet away, he stopped. Still nodding.
“Very nice shirt,” the Professor said finally. The motif was a pig roast. Here were happy Polynesians on their beach in front of their huts, gathered in an enthusiastic ring around a great pig carcass rotating above the coals.
“A gift,” Dante said.
“Oh, thank goodness.”
They played chess, naturally. The Professor set up a card table on the deck. Dante set out the pieces, hid two pawns behind his back. The Professor picked white. Once the game was underway there wasn’t a lot of talking, just wine sipping and clock punching and the normal brief exchanges of conversational small-arms fire.
It felt to the Professor like the exact same game they had last played, and had many times before that. Dante started classically, taking pawns up the middle, developing his knights and bishops. The Professor built walls. Diagonal defensive ranks of pawns. He castled. He connected rooks. Exchanges began; they both held back their queens. By the middle of the game the Professor was up on pieces, only to walk blindly into a trap. Dante skewered a knight and rook with his queen.
He sighed audibly. Took a slug of wine. “Not playing much, are we?”
“My opponent lost his appetite for the fight,” the Professor answered, moving the knight to protect against what would surely be the follow-up attack on his own queen.
“Ha,” Dante answered, taking the rook.
They battled down into the endgame. The Professor extinguishing each assault Dante mounted, each failing at a point closer to the parapet than the last. There was a violent exchange as the perimeter finally fell. Both queens taken. Dante spared a rook. The Professor a knight. One pawn a piece. It was academic.
Dante stood at the rail afterwards and wondered for the first time in the long, episodic chess relationship whether the Professor had thrown the game. He sipped his wine. They talked about work. About being busy, about finishing long projects. The Professor acknowledged that a book was in the works.
Dante turned to lean on the rail, showing interest. “Well, let’s have it, then.”
Stanley Park. Homeless people. Many more of them than you might think.
“You know, I never really understood what the hell you did for a living,” Dante said, giving his head a quick shake.
The Professor laughed. “They say if you can’t explain your work to a six-year-old, you need a new line.”
Dante didn’t think the Professor needed a new line, exactly. He thought the Professor probably lived among the homeless more ably than most people could. Showed more empathy, cared more. “Blessed are the poor and all that, I suppose?” Dante said.
The Professor sighed. When he seemed unwilling to answer, Dante scratched his chin and looked at him closely. There was another question waiting to be asked. The Professor sensed it.
“Jeremy,” Dante said, fi
nally. He had phoned. Out of service. He had written letters. Not at this address. He didn’t want to pester the Professor if the boy didn’t want to be found. Was that it?
“Not to be petulant,” the Professor said, “but you fired him.”
“True,” Dante said. “But after the opening things were not tranquil.”
“So I hear,” the Professor said, although Dante now repeated the whole story anyway. The rumours. The Health Department. A phone call from the very nervous executive director of the Canadian SPCA. (That was new, the Professor thought.) Picketers, law suits, graffiti, injunctions, public statements, stories in the local press, accusations, retractions, rephrased accusations, denials. “Inferno Victimized by Urban Myth?”—the question mark in this headline the subject of a heated debate between The Province editorial staff and Inferno’s lawyers. A debate that Inferno lost, releasing the rumour to public domain.
Jeremy disappeared off the map, Dante said. Yes, it was possible he had been harsh, even unduly harsh. “But if some sort of riddle had been asked in all of it,” he said, reasonably, “only Jeremy could have provided the answer.”
As it was, nobody could confirm what had happened or had not happened. And meanwhile, carrying on throughout all of it, there was that crazed British journalist running around telling everybody it was performance art.
“Like gasoline on a fire,” Dante said, shaking his head. “Not everybody likes performance art. And most people assumed that if it was performance art, something disgusting must have happened.”
Sure, the Gud Tayste article had turned out to be a boon when it finally came out. They got an injunction against the protestors in return for a placating statement about the opening. And in less than a month they were bursting at the seams. Gerriamo’s, as it ultimately played, had tremendous crossover appeal. Foodie-scenesters. The monied, urban, young. The hip of every stripe.
So what was the problem in that case? the Professor wondered.
Dante looked out over the water. He gripped the wooden rail.
“I just came back from a little vacation,” he said.
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