The Roar of the Crowd

by Janice Macdonald

  Myra was shaking her head slowly. I had a bad feeling I had overstepped an invisible line. I had a habit of doing that sort of thing.

  “Iain and I have an agreement. He doesn’t bring the strain of his day into the house, and I don’t ask. I know that sounds a bit antediluvian, but it works for us. You know what a cop’s life is like, Randy. I try to give him some space where he doesn’t have to deal with the underbelly of society, where he can come home to a semblance of happiness. There is just no way I could bring that up to him.”

  “Well, do you think I could? I have never discussed things with Iain, but Steve and I have been able to talk about things within certain boundaries. I know it’s not easy, but I have a great deal of respect for the police force, and the limits there are on what we can and cannot discuss. If I could call Iain at home tonight, just to talk to him…”

  “No.” Myra looked firm now. Nothing was going to get past the parapets of the sanctuary she had built for Iain. This had been a wasted visit.

  Aside from the new knowledge that I needed glasses. Perfect.

  9.

  No one had come by to arrest Denise by the time I got back to my apartment. I knew this because there were three messages from her on my voicemail. There was also a voicemail from Steve, who sounded a bit wistful, which I took to be a good thing. I had seen pictures of Swedish girls. I didn’t need him enjoying his time away too much.

  I called Denise back to let her know I had got her messages and to fill her in on my trip to the optometrist. While she was slightly amazed at Myra McCorquodale’s fierce insistence on not being a part of her husband’s work life, she understood the theory.

  “It’s a stressful life, I can see that. Iain’s lucky to have a partner who has his back that way.”

  “So do you think I should be providing that sort of safe haven for Steve? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Randy, you and Steve have a completely different sort of relationship.”

  “How so?” I was being a bit sensitive on this score, probably a combination of not having him near and being so recently Stepforded by Myra.

  “For one thing, you’re not married. You don’t share accommodation, and you haven’t built a family together. Where Iain goes to Myra for calmness and respite, Steve goes to you for inspiration and challenge. It’s a completely different dynamic.”

  “Yeah, but what if he needs to find calm respite somewhere? And it’s not with me?”

  “You do know you’re talking crazy, right? Steve adores you.”

  I recalled that I was talking to my friend who had just discovered her own boyfriend was cheating on her. This might not be the best conversation at the moment.

  “Anyhow, I don’t see any way of pussyfooting around Iain to talk to him about your situation. We either meet him head on, or just leave it lie.”

  “If I call him, the chances are just as good that I get Detective Gladue, and I know for a fact that woman dislikes me. I’m not sure why, but she has already made up her mind about me. I have a feeling she would love to find me guilty of murder so she could justify her feelings.”

  I couldn’t dispute it. Detective Gladue did emit bad vibes. It might be that woman-in-a-man’s-world sort of jockeying for power that sometimes happened; it could be the attitude one received from a woman who tallies up relative attractiveness and feels challenged. I had the uneasy feeling, though, that she was interested in Steve and saw me as a stumbling block on the road to her success with him.

  However, if Denise was also sensing that sort of disdain from Detective Gladue, perhaps I didn’t have anything to worry about. We were both just picking up a weird vibe in the way she presented herself. Or maybe we were both in all kinds of trouble.

  I promised to keep in contact with Denise, who was feeling very edgy, especially as she hadn’t heard from anyone that day. Neither the police nor Kieran had called her, and from the sound of her voice she had been keeping herself hydrated with caffeine. I told her to text me if she needed me and that I would always have my cellphone on.

  As soon as I hung up, I went hunting for my cellphone. It was in the bottom of my satchel, battery totally dead. I set it to charge on the little umbilical cord near my desk and turned to making a pot of tea. I figured I would email Steve once I’d got myself a cup and ask him if he would continue to make passes at me, now that I’d be a girl wearing glasses.

  Glasses. Was this the first sign on the slippery slope to middle age? Or was this merely a new accessory to be played with? Denise had warned against metal frames because the nose guards could be irritating if they pressed on a nerve. I figured I would take her with me to shop for plastic frames. I trusted Denise’s concept of style. Maybe not her taste in men, though.

  I set my big Jasper the Bear mug on a coaster and pulled my laptop to me on the loveseat. When I opened it up, the email icon told me I had fifteen messages. Eight of them were from Steve, but only one was an actual message. The rest were filled with photos from his adventures. He had been spending the majority of his time in Stockholm and was planning to head to Oslo with half the delegation while the rest went to Malmo. Steve’s focus was crime on public transit within a major city, and Malmo’s focus was on smuggling, so the Vancouver folks were more interested in that end of things.

  This whole Canadian police contingent to Scandinavia was interesting. Aside from the fact that we too were northern people, we shared other elements with the Swedes, Norse, and Finns. A bent toward socialism and a strong welfare system begat its own type of crime and social involvement.

  For instance, we didn’t tend to see much vigilantism in Canada, but the police did have to deal with groups of concerned citizens righteously wading into situations where levels of violence fuelled by alcohol or drugs could transform the participating bystanders into victims in the blink of an eye. There were similar situations in Norway and Sweden. That similarity was the initial impulse for this contingent of police to head over, with the blessings of the federal government, which was underwriting the excursion. Even with Oslo gaining the moniker of crime capital of the north, there were fewer cases of violence on the trains or platforms of public transit, those sanctuaries of warmth that bring together the shivering underbelly and commuting middle class to mix in uncomfortable union.

  Steve’s pictures of Stockholm were breathtaking. Somehow, they were a month ahead of us in terms of flowers and trees, and the juxtaposition of ancient cobblestones with modern fashion and cars was exotic.

  For the fifty-seventh time, I wished I’d managed to find a way to go with Steve on this trip. A few of the other detectives had brought their spouses along, who apparently were welcome to tour various elements if they wished or were allowed to head off on their own tours of folk museums and shopping plazas. It would have been expensive, though. Steve was rooming with an officer from Calgary, and we’d have had to spring for my airline tickets and the cost of a room to ourselves, since the delegation wasn’t going to allow for our just paying half the hotel room costs. We had crunched the numbers, but my going along, paired with my not making any money for the month of June, just didn’t compute.

  So here I was, and there was Steve. I sent him back a quick email responding to his comments on Swedish streetlights, and considered adding in my worries about Denise. In the end, I deleted three lines of my email. There was no point in burdening him with worries. He was so far away, and there was nothing he’d be able to do except fret that I was getting myself into hot water.

  Which there was no doubt I would be doing.

  10.

  Edmonton really is a theatre town, and has been for as long as I can remember, which is somewhere around the early 1980s. And when you consider the local situation, you can sort of see why it occurred.

  First you take a city that grew as the capital of a province, even though it is twice as far north as any other major metropolis in North America. The closest city of comparable size is three hours away, if you drive on the naughty side of the
speed limit and don’t stop for a doughnut halfway. The winters are long and dark, and while the summer is a glorious secret, it’s never long enough.

  Since you cannot commute easily to another centre for fine art or culture, you have to grow it yourself. And boy, had we ever. The Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, which was the first to record with rock bands, tour the north and embed members into schools, now resided in the amazing Winspear Centre and had recently celebrated their sixtieth anniversary. The Edmonton Public Library had been around for a century. The Opera was fifty. Alberta Ballet was more than sixty years old, the Citadel Theatre was closing in on fifty and the Walterdale Playhouse, home of amateur theatre at a high level, had celebrated their fifty-fifth birthday recently. Interspersed with all these stalwarts were smaller, edgier theatres, and even they were becoming august in their own right. The Shakespeare Festival in the Park Board had been mentioning their preliminary considerations for their thirtieth celebrations in a couple of years.

  Both the University of Alberta and Grant MacEwan University had strong theatre departments, with separate focuses. While U of A’s Bachelor of Fine Arts program was considered one of the best in the country, and had turned out some phenomenal actors in its time, the Musical Theatre program at Grant MacEwan had its own roster of triple-threat folks who could act, sing, dance, and likely juggle on unicycles.

  Every two years or so, a new theatre would spring up, with a base of new graduates and a shared dream. The older theatres had been started by MFA directing students wanting political, local, Canadian, or noon-hour platforms, but now it was actors, realizing they needed work to tide them over between Fringe seasons, who were pushing the envelope.

  You’d think all this energy coming from the performing arts would make Edmonton an easy place for the arts to exist, but it still seemed like an uphill battle. I guess people just don’t take the long view on a day-to-day basis. Whereas I had spent much of my life immersed in literature and the study of the culture of civilizations, it didn’t strike most people that their time on this planet would be remembered by the songs they sang and the art they made, not the roads they paved or the wells they dug. Those might be essential activities, but they weren’t what defined us. If we wanted to consider our lives to be purposeful, surely it was to help create and sustain a civilization that questioned, enlightened, and illuminated the human story.

  Tell that to the crowd in Oilers jerseys on the platform of the LRT on a Tuesday night.

  I had been seeing more theatre this year than ever before, mostly because of my connection to Denise. Not only was she tied to the community through Sarah and Kieran, she had been tagged as a Sterling judge this year, which meant she had a responsibility to see everything on offer so that she could realistically vote on the best of the theatrical offerings for the year.

  The Sterlings had been named for Elizabeth Sterling Haynes, the visionary woman who had been the driving force that began it all: Edmonton Little Theatre, The Banff School of Fine Arts, Studio Theatre at the U of A. Whenever Denise tired of going out to yet another play, usually with me in tow, she confided that she drew on thoughts of Mrs. Haynes, who had promoted theatre all over the province, riding trains and driving rutted roads, bringing her vision of a “theatre built not with bricks, but with people” to the prairies.

  The big evening of awards was held at the end of June. It encapsulated two distinct seasons in its view, the regular September-to-May season of most theatres, and the June-through-August season of festivals and Teatro la Quindicina, which had several years ago determined that it was more fruitful to go against the grain and deliver evenings of entertainment to people who were looking for places to go that were air-conditioned and delightful on our long summer nights.

  I wasn’t going to the awards dinner, of course. As far as I knew, Denise was planning to attend with Kieran, but perhaps all that had recently happened had changed that. A press conference was being held this week to announce the nominees, five in each category, broken down between musicals, dramas, and Fringe productions, which was only fair, given the relative amount of cash thrown at those three formats.

  I was interested to know whether or not any of the plays and actors Denise and I had seen and discussed over post-performance cocktails would make the short list. I wasn’t quite sure how many Sterling judges there were, so the short list could be a completely different animal than the roster of plays Denise had submitted as being worthy of consideration. As she had explained to me, each judge submitted his or her list, and through some sort of crazy algorithm, a list of nominees was created, which the judges then met to vote on. Technically, a play one hadn’t nominated might be on the final list, but at least all the judges would have seen the works and so could have an informed vote.

  One thing was for sure. Oren Gentry would likely be featured as the Outstanding Contribution to Edmonton Theatre, since he had died this year. I always thought it was such a shame that they didn’t smarten up and give lifetime achievements to people who were still around to receive them. If it were up to me, I would look around and celebrate a still-kicking member of the community. After all, Gentry would still be dead next year.

  Of course, next year they might be celebrating Eleanor Durant, though she was only nominally an Edmonton actress. She had moved to Toronto as soon as the ink was dry on her BFA, or even sooner, according to some apocryphal stories.

  First Oren, now Eleanor. It really wasn’t a great year to be in the arts in Edmonton. I wondered if there was going to be a hat trick any time soon. After all, this was such a hockey town.

  Denise had asked me along to the new Stewart Lemoine play, which had opened earlier in the week, and I had been looking forward to it. His plays, performed as usual by the Teatro la Quindicina, the theatre he had founded years ago, were a complex layering of froth, arch observations of human frailty, and devastatingly funny pronouncements given at a breakneck pace. It was as if Noel Coward had met up with Woody Allan and decided to collaborate on a parody of George Bernard Shaw. I loved them all and looked forward to the annual remounting of a classic along with a brand new offering and, on occasion, a musical written in tandem with some of the other members of the collective.

  Denise and I were standing in line outside along the front of the former fire hall. Steve had once joked that, in an Edmonton twist, you shouldn’t yell “theatre” in a crowded fire hall, since in Old Strathcona, two fire halls had been converted to theatres. The theatre itself in the Varscona was quite a nice space, but the lobby was the size of a shoebox and twice as claustrophobic, even with the windows. On pleasant days, it was easier to create a facsimile of the Fringe lines, with ropes designating where to wait.

  Denise flashed her Sterling pass discreetly to the woman at the door, who nodded as the two of us passed through. I was secretly delighted to be part of this inner circle, and to try to be worthy of the free shows, I made a point of taking Denise for a drink or a coffee after each show to discuss our reactions. I hoped in some small way to be making the process of deciding who to nominate and who to vote for easier in her mind.

  Later, after the show had whirled its way into a dizzying conclusion, Denise and I perched on high chairs in Naanolicious, helping ourselves to amazing concoctions of garlic and tamarind-flavoured naan bread and sipping mango lasses. We were agreeing on the sublime casting of Kendra Connor in the role of Daisy when several of the cast members entered the restaurant, burbling with post-show energy.

  Jeff Haslam, the star of the show and artistic director of the theatre, spotted Denise and waved. After the group had divested itself of scarves and bags and settled in to order food, Jeff slipped off his stool and popped over to talk to us.

  “It was a great show, Jeff, we were there this evening,” said Denise with a smile, proffering our basket of naan. Jeff waved it off.

  “I have more than enough coming, I won’t gobble yours. I thought I spotted you; did you really enjoy it? I’m so glad.”

  “The part where y
ou were attempting to translate the Rubaiyat into Esperanto was hysterical. Was all of that authentic?”

  “As much as possible. I think Stewart put that section in there just to get back at me for beating him in a board game marathon. I am the king of Ticket to Ride. Ha!”

  Jeff was as charming off stage as on, and having him speak directly to me made me laugh with him, even if I wasn’t sure what the heck he was talking about.

  He seemed to be intent on speaking to Denise, though, so I excused myself to use the washroom, just to give them a moment or two. When I got back to the table, she was drinking water from the pounded brass cup and looking weary.

  “You okay?”

  She didn’t look it, frankly. What to anyone else would be a vision of serenity was to my experienced eye a very untranquil Denise.

  “Jeff wanted me to know that there is a story circulating that I caught Kieran and Eleanor in flagrante, and murdered her as a result.”

  “Really? Among the theatre community? That’s not going to bode well for when Detective Gladue goes asking questions. Does he have any idea where that rumour started?”

  “He doesn’t, but I do.” Denise sucked up the last of her Indian version of a fruit smoothie and plunked it down on the table. “Would it be okay with you if we left now?”

  I had half a lasse to go, but I quickly drank three big gulps of it, causing a minor brain freeze of mangoey goodness. She shoved two twenties in the puffy leatherette folder, even though I had planned on picking up the cheque, and we made our way out of the long, narrow restaurant.

  Night life on Whyte Avenue was beginning to pick up, and we passed gaggles of smokers congregated on the sidewalks near nightclub, pub, and restaurant doors on the way to the small parkade where Denise had left her car. This spilling out into the street of partying humanity had a tendency to make Whyte a bit louder and edgier than it had been in my grad school days, and most people who came down here on a Saturday morning to avail themselves of the Farmers’ Market wouldn’t recognize it on a Thursday evening after 10:00 p.m.