Silverson squeezed Arthur’s shoulder, conspiratorially. “Is the problem resolved, then? I’m delighted to have met you, Constable.” He thrust out a hand; Zoller took it numbly. “Thank you for caring.”
Zoller mumbled some words of parting and retreated to his Hummer.
“What a bring-down,” Morg said softly, but Zoller heard and turned quickly to glare at him.
§
Fifteen minutes into Silverson’s guided tour, Arthur had seen nothing to confirm rumours of love-drug labs and open-air orgies. But he did see an epic display of rural naiveté. The planting of vegetable seeds late in the growing season. The fence-free gardens overrun with fowl and bunny rabbits. An emu had broken into the seed packets, and no one seemed disturbed that a cow was trampling over a newly seeded lawn.
One could hardly go back to the land if one had never been there, and clearly most of these Americans had never been closer to a farm than the local flower shop. Arthur felt sorry for them, for their ineptitude — yet, amazingly, they were the happy ones, while he was still wired into the world’s hubbub and racket, its bother and pain. Arthur had never transcended the competitive life of the courts, the cold, hard logic of the law; therefore he was impregnable — or so he thought before last weekend’s onset of calm, pleasant peace. It was worrying that the skeptic within had so easily been lulled.
The grounds could have been a set for a costume musical — might these joyous workers suddenly burst into song? He wondered if they’d truly found inner peace, or were victims of some kind of hypnotic delusion. He wondered if they were drugged. A ludicrous image came of Silverson performing frontal lobotomies in the spa.
Or maybe it was all a cover for something patently salacious. Happening right now behind the lodge, in the heated pool and hot tub where Silverson was leading him. The group-groping bacchanal that Kurt Zoller was so hungry to witness.
The several women in the water wore bathing suits. They smiled and waved. Arthur smiled and waved. He was rewarded with views of nothing more risqué than dripping armpit fluff. “It’s the women’s time,” Silverson said. “They have the pool until dinner.”
So far, Silverson hadn’t treated Arthur like a senile senior or tried to evangelize him. But he was full of mundane bonhomie, bouncing about from one unspiritual topic to another: films, politics, sports. He’d once had a drinking problem. He’d suffered a cruel divorce. He knew Arthur’s pain. They were one.
Silverson invited him to share a bench overlooking the cove, his “favourite retreat for morning meditation.” Arthur joined him, perching a few feet away, out of range of his minty breath.
Silverson looked pensively at the lapping waves. “There’s a sadness to every sunset, however lovely, but the dawn renews hope, renews our faith to be who we are.” He mused. “Who we are is who we are. That is essential to our philosophy, the philosophy of Baba Sri Rameesh. We cannot lose who we are, no matter what we experience. A simple truth.” He seemed for a moment to be lost in his own easy-listening formulations, then snapped out of it. “I’m boring you. I can’t blame you for seeming . . . maybe doubtful is the word, Arthur? Cynical? Or maybe just distracted by concerns. You have more on your mind than the sun’s rising and setting.”
Arthur resisted the inference that he was caught up in personal concerns that dwarfed the earth’s movement about the sun. There was not the remotest hope — one obviously embraced by Silver Tongue — that Arthur would give voice to any disquiet he felt. Over his long-distance wife, for instance, and her risky effort to bring down Emil Farquist. Over Lloyd Chalmers.
He’d managed to suppress all such unease during this cluttered Monday. But now it was back. He endured a few moments of agitation as he fought a freakish temptation to open up to this supposed spiritual healer, to seek solace, find fixes for his angst.
“Is there anything you’d like to ask?”
This was how they got you, sympathetic listening followed by futile nostrums, bargain-basement philosophies.
He looked hard into Silverson’s glacier-blue eyes. “Tell me about your journey here, Jason.”
“Actual or metaphysical?”
Arthur permitted himself a smile. “I’m interested in how someone becomes a guru.”
“Live in the moment not in the mind. Erase the past.” Silverson laughed. “Not so easily done under cross-examination.”
But he showed few qualms about disclosing his unerased past. A Los Angeleno, born into the movie world, his father a documentary producer. Studied film at UCLA, wrote a few scripts that still embarrassed him, finally found his niche in the horror genre. “I became a schlock jock, ultimately attaining a state beyond embarrassment.” He’d made good money, then lost most of it in the collapse a decade ago and simultaneously endured a “cosmic, transcendental awakening.”
He’d gathered “friends,” as he called them, not disciples, and brought them here. “Some well off, some not so. We ask each to contribute what he or she can. Rich and poor, we pool what we have. An enlightened communism.”
Arthur was becoming impatient. He wanted him to drop the mask, reveal he was a fraud, instead of sounding so reasonable, so high-minded. Nor did he want to hear he was some kind of licensed guru, that he’d taken formal training in New Age therapies, but it turned out he had. After his awakening, he’d studied at the Esalen Institute, becoming certified in “humanistic hypnotherapy.” He later ran a group-counselling program for people in emotional and spiritual crises. He spent a year in India, where Baba Sri Rameesh added a spiritual element to his new outlook. “Great and universally loved,” said a pamphlet Arthur had seen. “Known to all simply as the Baba.”
Arthur supposed he was telling the truth about these things — not the whole truth, just information easily verified. There would be time to reflect further on his apparent skill at hypnotherapy, but that detail had already buttressed Arthur’s cynical estimates of the man. He could see how many might not resist the pull of his radiant eyes. At the count of ten you will awake. You will be free.
“I feel a bit of a chill,” Silverson said. “What do you say we go back to the lodge and warm up with a mug of gupa?” He laughed. “That’s what they jokingly call it around here. Specialty of the house, fruit toddy with a few organic spices and herbs, including a pinch of echinacea. You’ll be begging for seconds.”
Arthur blanched.
The tour ended in the lodge, in what Silverson called his business office: a wide counter, a desk behind it, a few comfortable chairs, the room clean, orderly, uninhabited — unless one counted the vacant presence of Morgan Baumgarten. Silverson indicated the door, and Morg silently sidled out into the lodge’s common room.
The office hosted the commune’s only phone, only radio, only computer. A fax machine. A mini-television. Even a security camera, with a blinking green light. This was the control centre, Arthur assumed, remembering Reverend Al’s unkind assessment: “His followers are in purdah, protected from worldly concerns.”
Silverson observed him studying the electronics. “These devices are civilization’s enemies, sources of fret and despair. We believe the composed mind needs protection from them.”
Arthur supposed Silverson had risen to the level where he could no longer be corrupted by the six-o’clock news.
His host excused himself for a moment, leaving the door open. Posted on the counter was a daily schedule: body movement therapy, bioenergetics, dreamwork. A rack of pamphlets from human potential schools. One was from Esalen for a course in advanced hypnosis. “We are committed,” it read, “to integrating spiritual consciousness and global awareness into the psychotherapeutic community.”
Silverson returned bearing a tray with some muffins and two mugs of gupa, an awful-looking purplish liquid, spices swimming in it. The happiness drug, it softened up his victims.
When Silverson insisted on clicking mugs, Arthur sought to avoid a display of impoliten
ess and pretended to take a sip, then returned the mug to the tray, remarking on how hot it was. He was almost certain those oatmeal cookies from Wholeness — or Wellness — had been gupafied.
Silverson took a healthy swallow, looking hard at Arthur over the brim of his mug, as if daring him to just do it, to prove he wasn’t a cowardly old fogey. Arthur had no intention of drinking this concoction, let alone to beg for more, even if he must offend his host. He would explain he was allergic to echinacea.
The gupa problem was resolved when a matronly woman stormed into the office, knocking over the tray, spilling Arthur’s mug. “I love you,” she cried, making a beeline for her guru. “You are my reason for being.” To Arthur’s startled ears it sounded like a pop lyric.
“Morgan! A little help here!” Silverson vaulted the counter, found temporary refuge behind his desk. Morg rushed in, pried her off the counter, twisting her arm in a half-nelson. She continued vigorously to express her devotion to Silverson as she was wrestled from the room.
Arthur took a few moments to do a reality check. Her distant cry: “I love you!”
“That was Martha. She has . . . issues.” Silverson no longer seemed on charisma overload, and was breathing heavily. “She’ll be fine. She was in the ecstasy of the moment. Normally, it doesn’t . . .Well, sometimes things happen.” He failed to make eye contact this time, focussing instead on the purple stain on Arthur’s pants, crotch to knee.
§
Arthur waited in Taba’s pickup as she exchanged hugs with Felicity. His detour to this fantasy land had lasted too long — his pants were soaked with gupa, the sun had long set, and Niko and Yoki had invited him to dinner. He still couldn’t get a fix on what was going on here but was sure there was hidden mischief, likely involving Silverson’s pursuit of . . . what? Money? Sex?
Taba agreed. “That prick set this up so he can get his rocks off ten times a day.”
As they drove off, the peasants were descending from the fields. There was the cycling L.A. osteopath, cleansing layers of negative patterns by watering the kale. And his nutritionist partner working out her unfinished parental issues by shooing robins from the strawberries.
Again, there came over Arthur, unexpectedly, that odd pleasant feeling that had captured him on the weekend. It continued to build into something approaching gaiety, and he struggled to fight it. Had he inhaled gupa from the mug? Had it seeped through his skin?
He couldn’t overcome his merriment and was suddenly giggling, then laughing, unable to stop.
“What’s so fucking funny, Arthur?”
“The look on Silverson’s face, when she . . .” He sputtered, mimicking. “‘I love you! You are my reason for being!’”
It wasn’t the gupa. He was merely in the ecstasy of the moment.
THE DRONE AND THE SCRUM
An expectant calm had settled on the House, the calm that comes with high tension. Margaret doodled stick figures, hanging men. Other members fiddled and messaged and tweeted.
No one was paying much attention to the backbenchers enjoying their brief moments in front of the C-SPAN cameras. One of them introduced a mother of thirteen who’d won a fertility award from a pro-life group. From the Conservative backbench came loud applause and huzzahs for that splendid contribution to world overpopulation.
It was Thursday of an epically hectic week, and Margaret had resigned herself to an enduring state of frazzle. It was her default condition anyway, ever since entering politics, but it had been driven to new heights by the disappearance of Lou Sabatino. Compounded by her inability to do much about it should she find herself in full campaign mode.
With the non-confidence vote the first item of business, the chamber was filling quickly, party whips ensuring seats were filled with bottoms. But the twenty-four Liberal chairs were empty — the caucus was still in a heated divide over whether to force an election and risk their own annihilation. Shouts had been heard from their caucus room.
An old moose from the far backwoods of the government side introduced a group of wriggling fifth-graders who’d earned a trip to Ottawa. A reward for some exemplary deed — Margaret wasn’t plugged into the interpreters and didn’t get it all. Her French was barely passable. Jennie Withers, beside her, was fluent in both official languages and a couple of Algonquian dialects. But with an election in the offing, the deputy leader, to give her credit, had reined in her supporters, the nervous Nellies keen to toss their impetuous leader.
“What’s your bet?” Jennie said.
“The Drone knows he’ll lose his seat in an election. He’ll chicken out.” They called him the Drone — Xavier Martineau, the Liberal leader — because he droned on, had trouble ending his sentences.
Jennie disagreed. “I think his troops are revolting.”
“The mice. They are revolting.”
Jennie laughed. They were getting along fine, now that Margaret had made a soft landing over that appalling clanger with the hot mike. Four days now since her breathless tittle-tattle to Pierette. Nothing in the media about the Chief Whip playing horsey with a dominatrix. Nothing in Christie Montieth’s weekly column in the Ottawa Sun or on her blog, aside from some caustic crap about Margaret’s limp efforts at the WWF convention, how she’d wisely yielded the stage to her smart, attractive rival Jennie Withers. But nothing that might cause Emil Farquist to suspect he’d nearly been spectacularly outed.
There he was, front row, hands clasped across his broad belly, wearing an even broader smile. And why wouldn’t he smile? Were his government to go down, a leadership convention would soon follow. Humourless, charisma-challenged Win Fowler wasn’t exactly the most popular jock in the Conservative locker room, and Farquist was widely regarded as the deserving and rightful heir. The Tory backbenchers were beholden to him, as Government Whip. Margaret shuddered at the prospect. Prime Minister Farquist, of the well-paddled bottom, a fascist fetishist running the country.
Pierette had sleuthed out that he did own a small chalet, on Lac Vert in the Gatineau Hills — an hour’s drive north of Ottawa. Bought two years ago, according to the Quebec land register. Four acres, a mortgage on it. Loyal, resourceful, indispensible Pierette had taken the week off, playing detective, and was now in Montreal in a last-ditch effort to track down Sabatino. Margaret feared he’d had a change of heart; not a lot of backbone there.
He had not returned calls to his emergency number. He seemed not to have been at home all yesterday — Pierette saw neither him nor Svetlana Glinka while staking out their triplex from a rented car.
Pierette knew the neighborhood. A Montrealer, franco mom, anglais dad, she had lived not far from Centre-Sud. Still, being bilingual with local roots hadn’t helped her with Witness Protection. She’d talked to a sneering bureaucrat and got a quick, impolite brushoff.
Margaret had finally got up enough pluck to tell Arthur about her gaffe with the hot mike, though she desperately tried to minimize it: a peccadillo, without consequence. There’d been a bit of worry that Christie Montieth had been plugged in, but if so she would have been all over the front page; instead, her write-up was a typical put-down of Montieth’s least favourite politician.
Arthur had listened to this silently, though she could almost hear him boiling. As to Pierette’s sleuthing, he firmly urged discretion. Lou Sabatino attracted bad company, he was being targeted by the Mafia. Margaret and Pierette would be risking lives if they openly pursued him — his life, maybe theirs. Lou’s enemies wouldn’t care who got in the line of fire.
He’d reminded her there’d been another gangland murder last weekend in Montreal. Margaret had read the headlines: Nick Giusti, a former mob lawyer with a reputation for sleaze, had been gunned down outside his home in Laval, a fusillade from a passing SUV. He’d been returning from church.
Arthur had been relentless. Without Sabatino, without the tape, any mention of Farquist’s bizarre fancies could backfire with ruinous resul
ts. She had been lucky to escape blowback from the indignities she’d so blithely shared with Pierette last weekend — that should be a flashing red light.
Margaret smarted at the reproof, but gritted her teeth and promised to restrain herself.
Suddenly, after scolding her, Arthur had undergone a weird transformation, another attack of over-the-top ebullience. He sounded high — Arthur? High? — as he amused her with the latest local sagas: Nelson Forbish’s conversion to the Transformers, Zoller’s mission to punish them for their sins, the saga of Arthur’s excursion to Starkers Cove — the funny farm, he called it, agricultural anarchy — the spilled gupa, and Martha’s lustful attempt to mug the blond bombshell.
“Gupa? Did you drink it?” She didn’t let him answer, couldn’t stop laughing. She liked this version of Arthur Beauchamp. His scathing critique of the chaos at Starkers Cove had shattered her benign view of Jason Silverson’s bold experiment. It was all so comical and a relief from the daily strain of politics.
She’d been thinking a lot about her island lately. Not just the crazy stuff, like the Transformers, but its simple, homespun pleasures, its laid-back routines, its silliness, its lack of pretension, of urban slickness. The moist, salty air and the gentle breezes from the sea. She had started to ask herself: what the fuck am I doing here?
Xavier Martineau, the Drone, finally led his caucus in. Some looked defeated, some defiant, others dismayed — consensus had not been reached. Though Margaret was onside with the non-confidence vote, she was torn by the prospect of an election, of launching a campaign with loose ends hanging: Sabatino, the X-rated video.
The Liberals’ entry disrupted Question Period, and the NDP leader muffed his lines. Something about the Coast Mountains consortium being too cozy with the government.
The Prime Minister was equally distracted, studying the Liberals for some kind of signal, and he hadn’t quite grasped the question. “Once again, Mr. Speaker, my honourable friend demonstrates his penchant for wallowing in negativism. He very well knows my answer to his question.”
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