Stung

by William Deverell

  She has him surrounded now, one hand resting on the desk, the other on his knee. He seeks a reprieve, twists about, riffles through the legal briefs. “I’m expected to have this all mastered by the weekend. I feel like a college student, procrastinating as exams loom.”

  Message received, Taba backs off, just a step. “I’m sorry, I’ll stop teasing.” Then: “By the way, I can help you.”

  “How?”

  “You’re having trouble concentrating. I can help you with that.”

  Again she moves closer, her hands on his thighs. In retreating, he finds himself in an awkward and indefensible position: leaning back, his elbows on the desktop, and he can’t sit upright, can’t find leverage. He feels a tug: emboldened by the bulge below, Taba has unhitched his belt.

  She slides down, her face lost behind a thick crop of red hair, her nimble, muscular fingers working with astonishing speed, snapping open belt, button, and fly, and stroking his engorged member as one might throw a vase on a potter’s wheel. There comes a tickle, a touch of tongue, and in a panic he lurches up, breaking the connection, and grasps Taba’s arms and gently, firmly, leverages her back.

  “I can’t,” he says. “I’m truly, truly sorry.”

  “You’re sorry?” She withdraws, straightens, eyes wide with disbelief. “How truly, truly Canadian of you.”

  * * *

  Taba’s departure was swift, with Arthur in a red-faced fluster, getting her coat, then retrieving Rosie and seeing them to her truck, as all the while they emitted shared croaks of strained laughter and apology over their respective roles in a clumsily improvised bedroom farce.

  Now, in the bathroom, standing naked under a hot, cleansing torrent, aghast that he’d skirted so close to a disaster of orgasmic magnitude, hardly able to fathom how, God knows how, he’d found the strength to deny the primitive urgings of his id, desperate to believe he had not encouraged what nearly happened, feeling shame but still flushed and quivering with carnal heat, Arthur takes matters into his own hands.

  Chapter 15: Rivie

  1

  Friday, March 29

  Panic Disorder opens tonight for Bryan Adams on his Never Say Never Tour — the iconic rocker will donate tonight’s net to the Earth Survival Rebellion defence fund.

  It’s in Roy Thomson Hall, and we scored prime seats, as is our right, Lucy and me at the end of the third row, other Rebellionairs here and there but not Doc, who avoids crowds like the plague he’s afraid he’s going to catch.

  We have to stand and kick back our seats as a stunning Asian woman, with the bored expression of a model or princess, wiggles past and claims a seat a little ways down, advertising her perfect legs as she shrugs from her coat. Hair the colour of seaweed. Braless under a top that doesn’t pretend to hide her nips.

  “It’s Sooky-Sue,” Lucy hisses. The holy roller who stole the heart of Rockin’ Ray. You wonder what really goes on at the Assembly of the Lord Saviour Divine. They claim to be post-psychedelic, in recovery, but maybe it’s a cover for something shifty, maybe a tax scam. They have their own house of worship, a former Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Hall that was too square to survive on the Danforth. They chant, they sing.

  Lucy says, “Do you think that bitch is beautiful?”

  “Well, striking. It’s the beauty inside that counts.”

  “Please. You know how I hate nostrums.”

  “Okay, she’s mousey and unoriginal but faking it just for you, sweetie, because she knows you’ll be staring at her all night.”

  “Did you see her dilated pupils? She’s supposed to be a recovering trip-head. Not.”

  “Ray loves you. He’ll be back. He doesn’t want you to see him in pain as he dries out.”

  “Where’s your minder?”

  “Who?”

  “Richard the Second. Richard Dewilliger-James. Why isn’t he sitting on your lap?”

  “He’s somewhere back there sulking. I had to tell him my heart belongs to another.”

  “You told him after or before you fucked him?”

  “He’s still a virgin. This is your chance, Luce.”

  “Maybe I will.” Looking again at Sooky-Sue.

  I made a mistake several weeks ago putting my tongue in Richard’s mouth. My bad, because he rightly got the wrong idea. Yesterday, invited for lattes and appies in his solar-powered rooftop condo, I panicked when he seemed about to propose and told him I was secretly engaged. Not mentioning to whom. He knows about Chase D’Amato, that there’s an arrest warrant out, but he doesn’t know about me and Chase D’Amato.

  Even I don’t know about me and Chase D’Amato.

  House lights dim. Darkness except for the exit signs. A rustling and rumble of anticipation. A thinly focussed spotlight spears the stage. Standing under that spot, audaciously, zanily, is Rockin’ Ray Wozniak, in a safety helmet, goggles, and ear protectors, guitar raised above his head like a warrior’s shield. He flings the ear protectors into the crowd, whirls his axe, and blasts a triumphant ascending chord as his bandmates emerge from the darkness behind him.

  Roy Thomson Hall explodes in a kind of joyful delirium, every woman and man capable of standing is jumping and stomping and screaming and whistling. Including me, Dear Diary.

  2

  Tuesday, April 2

  It’s mid-morning and we’ve all been rounded up like stray cats into Nancy Faulk’s boardroom. We’re seated around an oval table, my co-conspirators and me, with Nancy and Selwyn Loo at the head, who explain that a judge wants us to show up in court tomorrow so she can observe us in the flesh. Apparently, she’s pissed off because some kind of pretrial hearing should have happened long ago, before the trial date was set.

  Missing from the room is my occasional lawyer, the avuncular Arthur Beauchamp, who is somewhere above Greenland on his way to cajole Dr. Dieter Hoff, the microbiologist. The judge is too antsy to wait for him to return, so tomorrow Nancy Faulk will represent us all.

  Alas, she’s in a totally fubar divorce situation and looks wretched. One of her associates is filling for her at some kind of mediation thing in some other boardroom. At stake in this tug-of-war, among other salient matters, is an antique, yes, cuckoo clock.

  “When will my allegedly legendary lawyer return?” I ask.

  “Arthur has a flight back on Friday,” says Nancy.

  “Well, it’ll be good to have him drop by.” That was too obviously snarky so I add, “Really.”

  Nancy says she expects that on his return he’ll stop overnight in Toronto but then will go on to the West Coast. “He has a situation involving a cougar named Tigger. Don’t ask.”

  Lucy, beside me, goes, “What’s with this cougar that’s so vital? Is it sleeping in his house? Did it eat his dog? Is my lawyer also the local Animal Control Officer?”

  “Goats,” Nancy croaks. “He’s got goats. Chickens.”

  Clearly, Nancy is overly hungover. She was leaning on her elbows but now wilts, groaning as she passes the baton to Selwyn. He stands, cool, calm, taking charge, begins with an update on the Queen v. us.

  Happily, our necessity defence is shaping up. Hopes are high that Dr. Dieter Hoff will get retained. Experts who have come aboard include a microbiologist, climatologist, statistician, and a professional beekeeper.

  Selwyn has met with them all but is too modest to say he awed them with his almost extrasensory genius. Enough funding is in to pay their fees. Donors, Bryan Adams, various good-works orgs, others like the Beekeepers’ Association, have been generous.

  So while the great Arthur Beauchamp is missing in action and hotshot feminist throat Nancy Faulk gets shitfaced every night because she stupidly married a dick, it’s up to a sightless chess master to allay confusions and sooth worries.

  So attractive too, so racked. The mystery continues: Is he gay? Dual? He’s got to be situated somewhere in the LGBT queue. Surely he could get it up f
or randy Rivie Levitsky. But he doesn’t give off signals.

  I am so primed. Chase D’Amato is available only in my self-abusing dreams. Richard Dewilliger-James was a potential desperate measure before he was claimed on waivers by Lucy Wales. She practically abducted him Friday night at the concert after-party, swarming him while Rockin’ Ray and Sooky-Sue looked on.

  Richard the Second, who only had eyes for me, is now addled over an anarchist with green hair who espouses direct action as a way to ignite the spirit of revolt among the downtrodden. She’d banged him in his Tesla X then twice more in his penthouse. Turns out he isn’t gay buy crazy shy, and so naive and awkward he had no idea what to do. Lucy says he comes from snoresville but is taking him on as a kind of project in sexual therapy.

  Meanwhile, as Selwyn continues to outline the case for the defence, Lucy and Ray are diligently not looking at each other from opposite sides of this oval table. But I suspect the revenge sex may not be working because he seems calm and spaced. We know he’s not on drugs, because they test him weekly. Could be hooked on meditation.

  Ivor Trebiloff is beside him, then Amy Snider. So totally in love. Sharing every good cause as it come along. Childless, they spend part of their evenings helping out at a hospice for kids with terminal cancer.

  Why can’t Rivie Levitsky find such companionship? Why can’t I even get laid? My only offers are from internet trolls who want to rape me. I know where you live. I’ve seen that more than once.

  Selwyn says he’s a little baffled over tomorrow’s appearance in what they call chambers court. The judge apparently wants to look us over, maybe expecting a freak show for her entertainment. Following that, she will be closeted with counsel for a pretrial, at which issues of law and procedure are supposed to be resolved in the absence of public, press, and us.

  Lucy nudges me, whispers: “Woman judge is good, right? As opposed to a misogynist prick.”

  To my other side, Okie Joe inputs Selwyn’s briefing with a virtual keyboard. Joe Meekes. Now that I know his full name he somehow seems more distant, less of a pal. Or maybe that’s because of his changes: he’s more settled, his mood softer, he smiles more. Can’t figure out why. Hmm, is it because his girlfriend came up from Tulsa in December and has moved into his flat?

  She’s a chiphead too, and together they’re running an online network for the American Refugee Society, keeping them connected, helping with immigration, red tape, finding jobs.

  So that’s everyone up to date but Dr. Helmut Knutsen, who sits as far away from me as possible because he saw me sniffle. It’s just a cold, it came on after the Bryan Adams benefit and is mostly gone. Anyway, I’ve given up trying to get seduced by him, I can’t even get within range.

  However shy, he does have an ego, with overtones of the messianic. Lucy and I have decided his raison d’être is all about creating his legacy, even if it costs him a decade in the brig.

  Selwyn sits. “Nancy?” He has to give a little nudge to rouse her from her torpor.

  She slugs back some aspirin with a gulp of water, then looks sorrowfully about the room. A raspy, croaky speech: “We have been kicked in the butt by Deputy A.G. Azra Khan. He has conspired to put us in front of a vain, sociopathic birth accident. Madam Justice Colleen Donahue, former go-to gal for the insurance industry, fighting claims by the crippled and the flooded out. A leftover from the Harper regime, bitter because the Liberals have kept her stuck at the trial court level.”

  Groans around the table.

  “Even worse, she’s smart. Taught insurance and constitutional law at Osgoode. Former talk-show pundit and essayist for the right-wing media.”

  More groans.

  “Also, she hates me from a confrontation at a bar retreat when I called her a fascist cunt.”

  Ironic cheers.

  3

  Wednesday, April 3

  When I come from the shower, towelling off, Lucy is pondering what to wear for court. She’s also smoking pot, which she never used to do in the morning. Until Ray got into religion and Sooky-Sue.

  “I’ve got to be myself today,” says Lucy as she tries on a T-shirt inscribed “My Vagina, My Rules.”

  This is not normcore attire. I go, “So I guess marijuana does cause brain damage. You heard Nancy. The judge is a sociopathic birth accident, and I’ll bet she’s a pro-life Irish papist whose Bible says you do not hold exclusive rights to your own vagina.”

  Lucy whips off the shirt, tosses it like a stripper would, with a whirl, a windup, and a fling, aiming for Sinbad, who spills a bowl of granola as he jumps off a table. He yowls back at her in anger.

  “Fucking cat,” says Lucy, getting a rag.

  The flat, as usual, is a total slum. Lucy is the main perpetrator of this but likes to blame the cats. We have to clear out the rubble soon, attack with mops, borrow a vacuum somewhere — Professor Wenz returns on Easter weekend.

  Whereupon Lucy will move in with Richard the Second and I’ll be on the street. How fair is that? He’s my bondsman. But the bashful nerd isn’t offering me a spare room in his vast solar eyrie.

  Right now I’m more worried about today, about things somehow going awry in court. Nancy Faulk, with her hangovers and her harried vibes, doesn’t give me confidence.

  I open my laptop and search for Garibaldi Island Cougar, scroll down, click on a headline from the Garibaldi Island Bleat. “Cougar Runs A Mock” — I can’t tell whether that’s a typo or ironic. An alpaca. A Shropshire sheep. Various chickens and pets. A goat. Okay, Beauchamp’s excuse isn’t so flimsy. He raises goats. Their need for safety trumps mine. I’ll see him when I see him.

  While I’m at it, I check my messages. Some illiterate toad has found my text address. I NOW WHERE U LIVE COMMIE JEW CUNT. Sorry, scumsucker, you don’t scare me.

  Lucy holds up another T-shirt. “This will make the judge happy. Poached it off a guy at the beach last July, he was selling this shit off a wagon.” It reads, “Pro-Life. Pro-Gun. Pro-God.”

  I finally remember how clever Lucy is at faking me out. I observe how her hair is its natural brunette, no face paint, no black outlining. She’ll obey Nancy’s dress code: clean, neat, casual.

  I too will suck up — with leggings, neat blouse, long skirt. Maybe I ought to go all the way: a cowl, like Atwood’s Offred.

  * * *

  The Superior Court of Justice, at 361 University Avenue, is a boring, blocky rectangle, seven storeys of courtrooms strung out along corridors that radiate from the building’s dominant feature: a pair of giant escalators. A utilitarian touch, but ugly. They’re lifting Lucy and me to the fourth level, where we are to attend in room 4-8 for what they call a pretrial hearing.

  The courts don’t open for twenty minutes but there’s already heavy traffic on our upscalator, with slick-combed lawyers in black robes taking meetings on the go. Some reporters in their off-the-racks and permanent presses have hustled up past us and are bugging a lawyer in a pinstripe suit and flashy fuchsia tie. They want to know what’s going on, why the secrecy.

  “It’s our prosecutor,” Lucy says. “He’s gorgeous.”

  Deputy Attorney General Azra Khan has turned to banter with the press but looks over their heads at Lucy and me, appraises us unblinkingly. He’s disturbingly handsome. Dark, magnetic eyes. Longish black hair, grey at the temples. Laugh wrinkles.

  A reporter asks if he made a deal with the defence.

  “Ms. Stevens, the Crown has zero interest in backroom deals with anyone. The Crown is interested solely in justice being done in a public court of law. Let the bright light of the free press freely shine on this case.” A rueful grin. “Except, sadly, today, when we shall be in camera.”

  Protests erupt.

  “I shall dutifully convey your concerns to Her Ladyship.” He returns his gaze to Lucy and me. I lock onto his eyes, let him know his jaunty sound bites don’t impress me. He still ascends backwards
on being delivered to the fourth floor, but does a nimble little dance and alights safely. His bag-toter, what they call a junior, stumbles along after him.

  The reporters join other media milling outside our courtroom, along with a fair number of the curious public, all barred from entering by a court officer.

  “Don’t turn to look over your left shoulder,” says Lucy.

  I do so and see Nancy Faulk talking with someone facing away from me. That broad, muscled back seems eerily familiar. The slumped shoulders.

  It’s Howie. Howell J. Griffin. Now his rugged, sad features come into profile. His belly flab, his least attractive feature, has gone. What the hell is he doing here? Has he discovered reading? He holds a couple of library books.

  Before he can turn and see me, I am ushered into chambers court.

  4

  The only difference I can see between a regular and a chambers court is the lawyers don’t wear robes. In fact, room 4-8 is actually fitted out for jury trials, with a glassed-in prisoners’ box that can barely accommodate all seven of us. The court officers must endure Nancy’s wrath as they hustle us into it: she maintains we’re free on bail and can sit anywhere.

  The Court Clerk, last name Pucket — Miss Pucket she wants to be called, not Ms. — regrets to advise that Justice Donahue prefers the traditional practice of “defendants being in their proper place.”

  She’s a cliché, this Miss Pucket: the prissy bureaucrat who has served the system with obsessive loyalty from time immemorial.

  Nancy is in better shape today, though far from peak, smelling of breath mints as she goes to my ear: “Howie Griffin buttonholed me. He hoped to talk to Arthur. I said no. I’m setting him up with counsel.”

  “If he wants to meet with me, no way. He could be armed and dangerous.”

  “Wrong concept. This is more of a romantic comedy. He’s bitter, yeah — at Chemican for kicking his ass summarily out the door. But he made it clear he’d be happy to see you get off. Have you ever considered the big goof may still be in love with you?”