She held the door open, ushered him in to a vestibule. An inner door opened to a parlour, presumably the therapy clinic: soft lights, plush lounge chairs, carpeted walls, erotic art. A well-stocked bar. Svetlana took his jacket, hung it up with her coat, shimmied out of her leggings, told him to be comfortable. As if that was possible.
“How do you know I’m a reporter?”
“Seen you on the news, darlink.”
He’d been a fool to have expected anonymity in this crowded metropolis. He felt unsteady and sank with a shuddering sigh into the first chair he could find, a recliner. Would he enjoy a drink? Yeah, a whisky would go down good. She poured him a bracer, two inches of Johnny Red, then pulled out a cigarette, thought about it, put it away. She seemed agitated.
“From four months ago, I am making this prick happy. Four months’ loyal service! He wants a change, says I’m too old to be his mother. Too old! He wants some bunny-fucking teenage slut. I’m a professional, not a whore! A therapist! He’ll never find another Svetlana!”
When Lou put his glasses on she came into stark relief. So did her nipples, beneath a tight silk top. Incalculably long legs. Kohl eyes, a full red mouth. She didn’t seem so old she’d need to be replaced. Late thirties.
“Okay, so here is plan.” She lit the cigarette after all, but cracked open the balcony door, blew the smoke outside. “You, famous reporter Lou Sabatino, have contacts in news business, magazine business. Like People or Rolling Stone. Big newspapers, maybe big tabloid.”
Lou sipped at his whisky, stalling until she came to the point.
“You get nice cut, Lou. Twenty points. What saying you? How much they pay? Five hundred? Seven hundred?”
“Dollars?”
She laughed. “Funny man. Thousands, darlink. Only thing, can’t use my name. I am informed source. Deep Throat.”
“Svetlana, if this is a kind of sex scandal, nobody will touch it unless you go public. They’ll want pictures, everything.”
A pout, a frown, a rethink.
“Show me what you’ve got.”
She brightened. “All live, on camera. Because I not trusting this rat at first in case he’s too kinky.”
He struggled to his feet as she directed his gaze to a tiny GoPro camera hidden between folds of velvet curtain, the little round eye of its lens barely showing. “With new clients, I take it on calls, in case of hanky-panky.” From dicks with anger problems, Lou presumed. “This was our first date, early January.”
He followed her beyond the curtain, past a cot with leather straps affixed to it, past shelves with dildos and belts and thongs and objects he didn’t recognize and didn’t want to, into a small office, where her Toshiba was open on a desk, the video on pause, the client’s bum raised, the riding whip suspended on a downward stroke. Svetlana clicked play. The date stamp: January 6.
“I was a bad boy!” Thwack!
“I teaching you, you bad boy, you piece of shit. You want harder?”
“No, Mother, I beg you!”
Thwack!
Half a minute of this and then they were playing horsey, Svetlana with her prod, the bad boy bucking, showing his face in partial silhouette, his voice and profile familiar, a prominent, someone he ought to know. He guessed she’d hidden the camera somewhere in that log cabin in the boreal woods. The postcard view from the window of frozen lake and snowy hills seemed surreal against the pornographic foreground.
Lou watched all this with anus-clenching dread, a tinge of nausea — he was wishing he hadn’t had the poutine.
“Please, God, help me, make her stop!” the fat-assed fellow called, unavailingly, as he carried his mount out of view of the camera. A big voice, commanding, agonizingly familiar.
“That was back in January. No hanky-panky, so no danger, no more need for taking movies. Later on I learn he has troubles. I helped him through it, the back-stabbing shit.”
“Through what?”
“His mother. Never mind. As an ethical therapist I can’t repeat.”
Still nothing on the screen but the background. Some guttural sounds, suspiciously like someone beating off. “Is there more to see?”
“Enjoy.”
In a few seconds, the movie’s male lead reappeared, shrugging into a purple turtleneck pullover, tightening the draw cord on his lounge pants, a full frontal view. Lou gasped as he walked off camera. The fat-assed masochist was the Honourable Emil Farquist, federal environment minister.
“This is ball-breaker, yes?” Svetlana said.
Lou’s throat was dry, his voice croaking as he agreed, yes, this was dynamite, and explained again that she would have to put herself on the line. There’d be reporters, cameras, gawkers on the street. Maybe visits by the police. Lawyers. At any rate, no one in the media had the kind of money she was seeking.
She frowned. “Okay, maybe we write book. As told to Lou Sabatino. Half and half. But I keep all rights until.” She closed the laptop with a firm click.
Lou asked for a glass of water, and when she went to fetch it, he dipped into his pocket and pulled out the memory stick he’d rescued from his desk and stuck it into a port in the Toshiba, lifted its lid. Enter Media Player. Open recent. Click on ‘Last Played.’ Control-C. Click on Drive E. Control -V.
The copying took fifteen tense seconds, but the USB drive was back in his pocket by the time she returned, not with water but sparkling wine, two glasses.
She sipped hers. “Well, Mr. Reporter?”
Emil Farquist. Lou knew him. He’d watched him in the House, at his press conferences, had even interviewed him. He was not one of the dummies that infested the Conservative Party. He was a much-published economist who ran a think tank in Alberta. He was also Chief Government Whip; the irony was breathtaking. “How bad do you want this very bad boy?”
“Very, very, very bad. Main thing is not money. Main thing is principle. Main thing is destroy him. But then we write book, yes?”
She took Lou’s silence as assent and touched her glass to his with a confirmatory tinkle.
Her big blues went sad. “Is like love story, but unhappy ending, a woman wronged.”
“A love story?” A jest, surely.
Another cigarette, a spume of smoke. “I told him it was the first time for Svetlana, to fall in love.”
“You were in love with him?”
“Of course not. The prick!”
THE TRANSFORMATION MISSION
A banner outside the community hall demanded: “Wake up! Smell the Roses at the Spring Flower Show!” This being an annual event on the amiable island of Garibaldi, in the West Coast’s Salish Sea. About a hundred locals were meandering about tables bedecked with blooms, inside the hall and out. The sun was in full bloom too on this warm May holiday weekend — it was Victoria Day; jackets had been doffed, collars undone, legs bared.
Arthur Ramsgate Beauchamp, QC, however, was in suit and tie, hair neatly combed, a new, well-tended moustache that he hoped in full flower would distract viewers from his overly robust nose. He believed in appropriate appearance for such lofty occasions — let them call him stuffy, but there were social rules, proprieties. Tucked in a breast pocket, adding a touch of flair, were his ribbons: two yellows, two reds, one first-place blue. That for his freesias.
Doc Dooley had won overall, as usual, but lost best arrangement to Ida Shewfelt’s little elves cavorting through petals and sniffing at pollen sacs. She was standing at the winners’ table, blushingly accepting raves from the event’s honorary judge, Margaret Blake: certified agronomist, local Member of Parliament, Green Party leader, national icon. Also Arthur’s wife — or, as she preferred, in the ponderous new language, his life companion.
“My goodness, Ida, this must have taken you a week. All these little elfin creatures. Can I take a picture of you with your lovely garland?”
Unstoppable Margaret Blake, forev
er campaigning. She was nearly two decades younger than Arthur, fit, slim, a feisty daughter of the counter-culture, and relatively, compared to Arthur, unsquare. With each passing year, she was blessed with a few more wrinkles and grey streaks in her hair, which made her all the more attractive, at least in Arthur’s view, coloured by his helpless, abiding love.
On their first encounter, fifteen years ago, when he’d first put up stakes on Garibaldi, he’d wilted under the power of her silvery-grey eyes, their show of confidence and wit, and soon thereafter she accepted his fumbling proposal. She was widowed; he was recovering from a long, failed marriage. But several years later, Margaret won a federal byelection, and since then there’d been long separations, and they’d had to endure the clash of different worlds: laid-back Garibaldi versus the whirl of politics.
And finally — woe! — Margaret succumbed to a brief affair last year. Though she had ruefully confessed to it, Arthur’s wounds had yet to scab over. He still bore the scars from his first, faithless marriage to Annabelle; from her uncounted lovers and his own forlorn, masochistic attachment to her.
Ida smiled blushingly for the camera. Click. “Did you really come all the way from Ottawa for this?”
“Gosh, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Gosh. Goodness. Margaret didn’t talk like that at home, but Ida Shewfelt was a Pentecostal, a hard vote to win. The Conservatives, whose government was almost on the rims, would target the MP for Cowichan and the Islands, a bur in their sides, at a general election that might soon be called. She would be returning to Ottawa tomorrow to push for a non-confidence vote to precipitate it.
Arthur didn’t enjoy campaigns. He found politics banal, reeking of pomposity and hypocrisy. Which was not to demean Margaret, who shone brightly among the lesser lights of Parliament. She could play the game (gosh, goodness), but on the national stage she was fearlessly outspoken, loved by many, unpopular with climate-change deniers, Tory cabinet ministers, and other victims of her caustic tongue. As much as Arthur doted on her, he dreaded the prospect of being her mainstreeting, flesh-pressing sidekick.
He was healthy enough to survive the ordeal: a tall, lanky man, unstooped by age, still with a full head of hair, and fit from his daily walks and farming chores. His mind was still sharp, if increasingly forgetful. He was shy and awkward in the political milieu — though not so in the rough-and-tumble of criminal practice: a star defence lawyer does not wear kid gloves to a trial for murder.
Margaret broke away from Ida Shewfelt and her pollen-snorting elves to join Arthur. “Who’s the blond bombshell?” she asked.
Arthur didn’t pick up on her wordplay until he realized she was squinting at an attractive, fair-haired man who had just got out of a small green van. The van continued on to the parking area, while the bombshell paused, taking in the scene. Posed was more like it. But that was snide. Arthur had increasingly found himself yielding to the curmudgeon within. Something to do with aging. Or anguish.
“Jason Silverson, dear. I’m surprised you haven’t met him.” That came off badly, a jab about her many absences. He bemoaned the subtle chafing that had snuck into their relationship since her extramarital liaison.
Silverson was shaking hands, breezily engaging with the locals, filming them with a video camera. Arthur had met him a few times at the general store and taken a profound dislike to him, though he wasn’t sure why. There was something about Silverson’s penetrating blue eyes, the perfect white dentals of his flashy smile. In his mid-forties, he was clean-shaven, thin-waisted, graceful, almost balletic. “He’s the reigning guru at Starkers Cove. Has them all in his pocket.”
Thirty brainwashed disciples, if Reverend Al Noggins was right. Garibaldi’s Anglican minister had been to their communal farm at Starkers Cove: a zoo of various species of edible animals, an extensive fenced garden, an aura of faux holiness pervading all. An adults-only alleged experiment in human relations — the Personal Transformation Mission, they called it, as if it was some kind of therapeutic religious order. Locals called them the Transformers.
Jason Silverson, the Transformers’ unfairly and undeservingly attractive guru, headed to the winners’ table, sharing his charms with several women mooning around him, inspecting their tulips, smelling their roses, as they posed for his camera. According to Reverend Al, several islanders had been transformed and were spending their free hours at Starkers Cove.
“Some folks think he’s the second coming of Christ,” Arthur said. Margaret gave him a disapproving look. “Quite the politician,” he added. Even that sounded snide.
Margaret continued to stare at Silverson, sizing him up. “Can you introduce me?”
She wouldn’t have to wait for that; Silverson was working his way toward them, a shoulder squeeze here, a few words there, a wink and a smile. He aimed his camera at Arthur and Margaret before approaching with one hand extended. “What a pleasure. I was hoping I’d see you, Mr. Beauchamp.” Bee-chem, pronounced correctly, the Anglicized version, not the French. “Wanted to tell you I’ve been enjoying your biography.”
A Thirst for Justice: The Trials of Arthur Beauchamp. An embarrassing 450-page strip search authored by lawyer–writer Wentworth Chance. Arthur’s notable courtroom triumphs were chronicled, but also his lapses, his debauches in the El Beau Room or Chez Forget, court hearings adjourned because he was too potted to carry on, his arrest outside a Gastown bar for being drunk and disorderly. His failed first marriage. His years of cuckoldom. His battle against alcoholism, finally won many hard years ago.
“Compelling story, Mr. Beauchamp. Your discovery of an authentic life path seems almost spiritual.” With that oblique compliment, Arthur was quickly disposed of, and Silverson shone his bright blues on Margaret. “Ms. Blake, I’m at your feet.”
She seemed taken aback by his intensity — he held her hand for twenty seconds, talking all the while in a mellifluous purr. He insisted she call him Jason. He was her truest follower, a passionate supporter of all things green. She must visit Starkers Cove — “your husband too” — to observe “our little experiment in healthy, cooperative living.”
It was a showcase for a sustainable lifestyle. Their goal was to live off the land, be dependent solely on their own resources. “No mechanized shortcuts, no exhaust-spewing engines, just the authentic peace that reigned before man’s destructive conquest of nature.”
Arthur read this as authentic cow flop, propaganda well rehearsed. Reverend Al called him Silver Tongue.
Margaret punctuated his eco-friendly discourse with supportive adverbs: “Exactly.” “Absolutely.” Maybe she’d succumbed to his flattery. If she was angling for the votes of his thirty followers, that would be a waste of time — almost all of them were Americans.
Maybe Arthur was just enduring another spasm of jealousy. He was prone to this, but repressing it only downloaded it into his fretful dreams. He’d been forced to accept that his feelings for Margaret weren’t fully requited. Her Ottawa affair had been discussed once, apologized for, never spoken of again. Relegated to the trash bin of history, he kept telling himself. Though that was far from true.
Dr. Lloyd Chalmers, professor, social psychologist, author, eco-activist: he was handsome, rugged, long-haired, as observed on the small screen — a TED lecture Margaret had played for him, about something called climate-change-denial neurosis.
Arthur’s morose musings were interrupted by the arrival of a young man, Silverson’s driver and aide-de-camp, introduced as Morgan Baumgarten. Heavily built, dark, a trim beard that failed to hide a scar running laterally under his chin — inflicted in lethal combat or by his own hand? His smile was nearly as bold as Silverson’s, but there was no life in his eyes. They seemed unfocussed. In contrast, the message on his T-shirt was eerily upbeat: “Just Do It!”
As Arthur shook his hand, Baumgarten stared past his right ear into the unfathomable distance. He didn’t have much to say, except, “They call me Morg.”
Arthur too was reduced to the role of silent sidekick while his life companion engaged Silverson in a spirited to-and-fro about the proposed Coast Mountains Pipeline that Margaret had been fighting tooth and nail, convinced it would irreparably pollute the waters and tar the shores of Super Natural British Columbia. Arthur found himself annoyed that Silverson was so alive to the issue, so . . . simpatico with Margaret.
Clearly this fellow was a con man — Arthur knew many, had defended some of the best — but he was unsure what his profit motive might be. It was known that he’d come here with about two dozen disciples and had added several dreamy-eyed locals. Freddy Biggs, for instance, who was working his way through a midlife crisis, and Herman Schloss, whose actress wife, Mookie, had left him for Hollywood to do a couple of low-budget films.
Having failed to engage Morg in any meaningful dialogue, Arthur went to help Reverend Al Noggins and his wife Zoë, who were at the refreshment table packing up dishes and coffee mugs to be washed and returned to the recycle station.
“Saw you talking to Silver Tongue,” Al said. “I hope you didn’t buy his guff, old boy.”
“He zeroed in on us. Margaret, mostly.”
“That guy Morgan Baumgarten, Silverson’s dogsbody, did you see his eyes? Thousand-mile stare. Empty sockets, reflecting the emptiness inside. Blind and speechless as baby rats, all of them. Jelly-brained followers of Swami Charisma over there.” Al wasn’t normally so cantankerous; that was Arthur’s traditional preserve.
Silverson finally parted from Margaret and looked about for others to schmooze, choosing, like the good publicist he was, Nelson Forbish, the 150-kilogram editor of the weekly Bleat. Several women hovered not far away, nudging each other, ogling, whispering.
Whipped Page 2
