by Dave Belisle
Watching Derek draw near, Helen's eyebrows lifted in surprise. She silently praised the chicken noodle soup. He hadn't tasted it yet. Maybe the odor was amorous. She smiled and opened her arms to receive Derek.
"Of course, we don't have to wait until tonight," she said, purring.
The hug was barely three seconds old when Helen turned up the screws on her vice-grip embrace and kissed him hard on the lips. Sylvie entered the room and stopped dead in her tracks. Facing the door, Derek's eyes met hers. Her shocked stare met his wide-eyed but tight-lipped denial. The non-verbal, fever pitch debate was over in an instant.
Sylvie spun on her heels, dropping the envelope on the floor. Helen almost didn't hear it hit the floor, her heart was triphammering away. She turned, but Sylvie was already out the door. Marcotte rued the day the Canadian Female Charter of Rights recognized hugging as a claim-staking bylaw.
"Who was that?" asked Helen.
A mollified Derek stared at the 8" x 11" manila envelope on the floor.
"Uh ... a cuh-cuh-cuh-courier?"
Artie appeared in the doorway. Helen walked over to the envelope on the floor and picked it up. Derek's marbles finally settled into their holes and he joined her.
"Maybe you should get another company," she said. "They certainly aren't very courteous."
Derek took the envelope from Helen.
"Artie. Could you take care of this, please?"
"Sure."
Artie shrugged his shoulders, took the envelope and left the room.
Helen peered into Derek's eyes like W.C. Fields sizing up a Philadelphia cheese-steak.
"Now then ... where were we?"
The image of Sylvie turning and running out the door kept playing out at the Bijou in Derek's head.
She kept reappearing, only to look at him wild-eyed and disappear again. The videotaped scene varied in speed, as the playback operator shuttled it back and forth.
"This is where you really went wrong," he said to Derek. "See that look in her eyes? You're dead meat, buddy. She just crucified you. Want me to loosen those nails in your hands and feet for ya?"
The operator shuttled the tape forward a few seconds.
"That's gonna cost you a few dozen roses ... and that look ... right -- there! Oh, the pain of it all. But cheer up, you don't have to start looking for roses just yet. She doesn't want to see your common-law butt for at least a week."
Derek hurried out of his office with Helen in hot pursuit.
"Derek, where are you going?"
"What? You said so yourself. I need a new courier service."
"But can't you just call them on the phone?"
Derek had to keep moving. His legs felt like they were in a potato sack with a few spuds still kicking around. Or the playback operator was still shuttling Marcotte's life along at half-speed. Derek was almost to the door.
Women were just too damn practical at times. They always had the right questions. Because of this, they missed out on valuable lessons that needed to be learned the hard way. Derek's valuable lesson was one tough nut -- which he'd barely cracked the surface. He'd been playing with the nut-cracker for too long and he'd just squeezed his knuckles by accident.
"If they're going to toss my mail around, damn it ... I'll see how far I can throw some of their employees."
"What about your soup? It's going to get cold. I still have the crackers in my purse."
Marcotte turned to his partner.
"Artie. When you're finished there, drink the soup in my office."
"Gotcha, boss."
Derek slammed the door behind him. Helen's shoulders slumped. She knew she should have added more beer and less flavour cubes to the soup. She nodded goodbye to Artie.
"See ya," he said with another c'est-la-vie shrug.
Helen exited and Artie turned his attention to the envelope Sylvie had dropped. He opened it and emptied the contents onto his desk. It was a scouting report on Gaston LaBonneglace. He let out a low whistle.
"I don't believe it. This is too good to be true."
He leaned over his computer keyboard and entered the information on LaBonneglace into the database. He typed, "Gaston LaBonneglace / Montreal, Quebec" on a line directly below the latest two entries: "Napoleon Tuckapuk / Portage Beaucoup, Manitoba" ... and ... "Danny Short Hand / Raven Lake, N.W.T."
At Herculean, Bittman chewed on a foot-long pastrami and provolone submarine. Both cheeks billowed at near capacity. His computer game of Tina's Tattoo Parlour was abruptly interrupted by a screen change. Bittman frowned. He was in the middle of applying a stunning cobra rattlesnake tattoo to the supple under side of Tina's left arm.
Tina's limb was replaced by May-Ja-Look's player database. The latest cross-town, stroke-by-stroke entry by Artie of the Gaston LaBonneglace information came up on the Herculean screen. Bittman peered closer. His jaws ground to a halt.
"Hah! Looks like we've found the boss's diamond in the rough."
Phone cocked to his ear, Erskine reclined in his easy chair. He propped his feet up on the desk and stared at a pigeon parked on the ledge outside his office window. They both wondered what time they should have lunch.
"Gaston, this is Victor Erskine ... president of Herculean Inc. I understand you're in the middle of negotiations to play a game with May-Ja-Look."
"That is true," Labonneglace said, lying through his recently capped teeth. Artie had merely made the perfunctory "hello, how-do-you-do" phone call. No dollar figures had been discussed.
"Well," Erskine said, "I can tell you the pregame meal will probably be fast food. And even then you may have to pull a D and D."
"What is dat ... a D an' D?"
"Dine and dash," said Erskine. "Here at Herculean, however ... we treat our players very nicely ..."
... 3 ...
The 1 3/4"-thick hollow-metal steel door was all that separated Derek from Sylvie. It felt like the Berlin Wall before common sense had been knocked into it. Derek stood outside her apartment door in the empty hallway. Sylvie waited inside, nervously munching on her last fresh finger nail. The polish on the remaining nine had since deteriorated from Fashion Avenue Fuchsia to Tin Pan Alley Grit.
"Sylvie, listen to me. It was nothing. A peck on the cheek ... I was considering just shaking her hand. Honest."
"Nothing? Hah! I've seen less passion leave other women pregnant! By the way ... is she?"
"Not unless she's next in line for immaculate conception. But she has some library books overdue."
Library books. Shit. Derek knew this wasn't working. He'd only just begun his full frontal assault and his pleas through the metal door were ringing ... hollow. He began pacing. Pacing was good. Tricky, but good. He had to keep a tight circle to stay close to the door in case she said something. At the same time he had to be careful not the trip over two welcome mats. There was another apartment door directly across from Sylvie's.
"I don't love her, Sylvie!"
"Then leave her!"
"You don't understand!"
"Of course I do. I'm a woman!"
"And I'm a man!"
"You're dodging the issue."
"I am not," Derek said. He was standing in the sixth-floor hallway of an apartment building carrying on a debate that others might label a shouting match. At any moment a tenant could poke their head into the hallway and tell him to shut the hell up. He paused to consider the consequences ... and a couple of snappy comebacks.
He and his girlfriend were in an improv group and were simply role playing.
She'd just shampooed the carpets and he had a foot condition.
They were experimenting with a new religion, Isomonogamy, whose basic precept of abstention was limited face-to-face contact.
Derek knew he'd need something up his sleeve for intervening neighbors, lest Sylvie see him drop his guard -- a.k.a., the no-hassle, all-muscle, Mr. Machismo.
Marcotte stopped pacing. He'd forgotten which door was hers. Was it #615 or #616? He'd only been to her place twice and
the number escaped him. He knew he should have bought that Memory Made Easier book.
The commercial advised viewers to tap their brain power and flood their bank accounts. Tired of saying, "Hi, Guy"? Remember everyone's name. Was it ham on rye or banana bread with bamboo shoots? Don't disappoint your friends at work when you pick up lunch. Apartment numbers? One-night stands, divorcees on the rebound, etc. See chapter eight.
Derek had a 50-50 chance. He looked at the welcome mats. They were identical. He didn't have time for a soil analysis. He leaned close to #615.
"Sylvie?" he whispered.
"Derek? Why are you whispering?"
"Because ... because ..."
Mr. Machismo went racing down the hallway ... narrowly missing an encyclopedia salesman just entering through the door at the end of the corridor.
"... Because there's a guy goin' door-to-door out here."
"Hmmph. Well, do me a favor and tell him I'm not home."
Cyril Shelton had been selling Ferret Student Encyclopedias for five weeks. The meek, clean-shaven 20-year-old had sold all of four sets. He was on the bubble ... or in encyclopedia sales parlance, the hollow globule. If a rookie salesman went three straight days without selling a set of the $1,500 reference tool, they were retrained the following day. Retraining consisted of a senior salesman chaperoning the junior salesman in the field for the entire day. The senior seller would show the trainee the way it should be done. Ideally, the trainer would sell a set of books. If no order was written, the trainee was doubly disappointed because he'd wasted a day playing co-pilot, taking turns ringing doorbells.
Cyril had been retrained five times by his supervisor, Eddie Dunwoody. Last week in Brantford, one family asked if they always traveled in pairs. Dunwoody replied, "It's a rough neighborhood." End of presentation.
Shelton needed an order. He couldn't blame his lack of sales on Eddie. Cyril was uncomfortable with the white lies his profession lived by. His peptic ulcer kicked in each time he purposely didn't mention the interest involved in the ten-year plan. Instead, the Ferret sales force would talk up the client to the three-year plan, assuring them they didn't want to "take out a mortgage on a doghouse". As well, many encyclopedia sales teams operated with provincial, but not city licenses. With a new town to take on each day, staying completely legal would've meant spending all their time sitting in license bureau offices.
Cyril and the other Ferret schleppers all had licenses for Ottawa, however. Canadians by definition were info-maniacs, but residents in the nation's capital thought encyclopedias were part of the housing code. Shelton had written two of his four orders there. He needed some of that Ottawa magic now.
"Sylvie", said Derek. "I need you. My heart is pouring out to you ... splattering all over these two sheets of metal between us. Please open the door. It's getting messy out here."
"Don't do this to me, Derek! I'm not something you can toss around to see which way I land. Get yourself a cat. That's it! Me or her, Derek. Choose. Now."
Derek's cellular phone rang.
"Beautiful. I'll bet it's a cat lover. Hold that thought, hon."
Derek turned away from the door, pulling the cellular phone out of his pocket to answer it.
"Artie? What's up."
"I just got off the phone with LaBonneglace. I was checking out some details."
"Wha-? Hold on there. Who?"
Derek didn't hear at first because Cyril, at the end of the hallway, had just had a door opened -- and slammed in his face.
Cyril looked down at his shoes.
From his vantage point upon the face of two shiny, heads up, American pennies nestled in the tops of young Mr. Shelton's penny loafers, Abraham Lincoln cleared his throat.
"Four score and seven doors must be knocked upon nightly. Ten doors must be successfully navigated. Four families must be presented. Accomplishing this, one order is yours. You are an optimist lost amongst pessimists. The individual inside that door ... and many more ... is fraught with negativism. Enliven them, I say. Enliven them."
The words from Honest Abe helped Cyril make it through the book droughts. When he was really down, he thought of the set of Ferret Student Encyclopedias he'd win if he could sell another 26 sets before the end of summer. Cyril loved books. Family tree experts would point to the cousin and two nieces he had in book-mad Ottawa.
"Gaston LaBonneglance," Artie said to Derek. "He's the best thing on blades in Montreal West and nobody's heard of him."
"Great. We'll go over it when I get back to the office."
"There's just one problem."
Cyril Shelton knocked on the next closest door. The door opened shortly ... and was summarily slammed in his face.
"What's that?" said Derek.
"When I spoke with him, he said he's playing for Erskine."
"But ..."
"Derek?" asked Artie.
Shelton knocked on the next door, now just one away from Derek. Once more, the door opened and was quickly shut in his face.
"Yeah?"
"Sylvie dropped his paperwork on the floor when she, uh ... was in the office this morning. When I spoke with LaBonneglace ... he said she was the first person he spoke with."
Shelton stood directly behind Derek. He knocked on the door opposite Sylvie's. At the sound of the door opening behind him, Marcotte placed his hand over the cell phone's mouthpiece. The door behind him slammed shut. Derek removed his hand.
"What?!? Do you realize what you're saying, Artie?"
"You don't know how I wish this was someone else talking to you right now. I'm sorry."
Derek paused and lowered his head. He stared at his feet. His eyes moved slowly to the big bold "WELCOME" mat before him with its raised lettering, sole-scrubbing font. He felt about as welcome as Howard Stern at a deb ball in the bible belt.
Cyril Shelton's knocking and pessimists' closing doors grew fainter in the distance.
"What's to be sorry about?" said Derek. He didn't have time to get into it with Artie. Nor did he want to. "I'm a walking whipping post," he said in jocular fashion. "I refurbish all whips every thousand lashes. Later, pal."
What were friends for? Derek winced from the effects of this gun shot blast point-blank to his integrity. He could discuss business, broads and badminton with Artie. But Marcotte's love life was his kinetic kitchen. Not many cooks had banged pots and pans in there. He was working on his own recipe for love and he guarded it like Colonel Sanders. Marcotte had all the herbs, but he was still looking for the right spice.
Derek returned the cell phone to his pocket and turned to face Sylvie's door.
"Open up or I'm gonna blow this sucker down!"
"What? You spend three minutes on the phone and that's the best you can do? The big, bad wolf? No wonder you need a consultant."
"What's the story on this LaBonneglace?"
"It's a surprise!"
Cyril Shelton suddenly raced by Derek. An apartment dweller, clad only in a bath robe and slippers, was in hot pursuit.
"And I'm onto it," said Derek. "The jig is up, kiddo! How long have you been working for Erskine?"
"What?!"
"I told you already ... this is hollow metal. You're reading me loud and clear, sweetheart! How long has Erskine been signing your check?"
Sylvie swung the door open wide.
"Now we're getting somewhere," said Derek triumphantly.
She slapped him in the face and slammed the door shut. Derek slowly, thoughtfully, repositioned his jaw with his right hand.
"Corridor diplomacy is becoming a lost art."
In his office, Erskine carefully examined a computer print-out as Bittman stood across the desk from him. Bittman wrung his hands nervously behind his back.
"You're positive this information is accurate," said Erskine.
"Yes, sir."
"And this takes the current line-ups into effect?"
"That's right, sir," said Bittman.
Erskine sneered at the piece of paper in his hands.
It was a score sheet of a computer-simulated game between Herculean and May-Ja-Look. The final score read: HERCULEAN 8, MAY-JA-LOOK 2. Erskine's office door burst open. Marcotte stood there, nostrils flaring.
"You lying sonofabitch."
"Should I call security, sir?" Bittman asked Erskine.
"That won't be necessary. Marcotte, come in. I was expecting you."
Erskine slipped the computer print-out into a folder on his desk.
"What the hell's going on here?! LaBonneglace is mine. I have the rights to Verdun."
"In a matter of speaking ..." said Erskine.
Erskine picked up a remote control from his desk. With a press of a button, a wall panel moved sideways exposing a large screen TV. Erskine pressed another button and a map of Montreal's metropolitan area appeared on the screen.
"Observe. The area in question ... Montreal."
Victor activated another button and three areas -- numbered 1, 2 and 3 -- were soon highlighted on the screen's map.
"Area number one ... Anjou. LaBonneglace played his high school hockey there with a team called the Banjos. Area number two ... Dorval. Gaston spent summers with his Aunt Therese. And in the third area, St. Laurent, he had two newspaper routes. All three of these areas belong to me. Where a person is from, you see ... can be interpreted in a number of ways."
"You're making up your own rules," said Derek.
"In the game of life, Marcotte, sometimes you have to. Does it matter if we're sharing the same sandbox? The same boardroom? The same hockey rink? A prick is a prick is a prick. A rich prick, that is."
"What more do you want?" asked Derek, masking his exasperation with the resolve of a monk.
"Oh, I have what I want," said Erskine. "Of course, if you have a problem ... you can always call Muldowney."
Erskine motioned to the phone on his desk. Derek looked at it, willing it to ring so he could quickly exit. Erskine had him by the short and curlies. Erskine knew Marcotte would just as soon claim responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing as go crying to Muldowney. Derek slowly looked around the office. He was tremoring like Mt. St. Helena. He could take the photo of Sir Wilfred Laurier and -- for effect -- launch it out the window. He considered grabbing the nickel-plated putter and clearing Erskine's desk with it. The glass of bourbon would look good on him. If he was lucky, the airborne zirconium pen holder might poke an eye out.
