Stung

by William Deverell

  Howie sweated the small stuff too. An organic farmer’s threats of bodily harm after his spinach was infected by windblown Vigor-Gro. A sign-carrying provocateur who picketed the Chemican Tower in Kansas City. An irate bird lover brandishing a jackknife.

  I’m supposed to look for evidence of human testing, so have no reason to riffle through these files except that I have a dim memory from that night eons ago when I was padding around barefoot, photographing documents. A memory about something involving lawyers, a court action.

  And here it is: one lonely document stamped “Legal — Volunteer Testing Program”: a printout of a July, 8, 2005, fax to Chemican’s lead lawyer from an attorney named W.W. Squirely, of Joplin, Missouri. It’s titled “Re: Dover and Chemican-International Ltd.” and advises that “settlement documents, duly executed, have been dispatched this date to the addressee by DHL Express,” followed by a tracking number and the hope that “all is to your satisfaction.”

  That’s it. An entire claim in damages has disappeared from Chemican’s files, except this one orphan fax. The addressee, one Baylor Jessup, was Chemican’s head of legal in 2005 but a quick check shows he’s retired.

  When I search the internet for “W.W. Squirely” I find him still listed as a practising attorney in Joplin, though according to Google he’s ninety-three. Local media described him as a well-loved country judge until he lost to a Democrat. Couldn’t have been that well-loved.

  What was the Volunteer Testing Program? Who was Dover? How had Chemican screwed him around? Presumably, they had a raft of lawyers to choose from, so why was this handled by their top beagle? Did Jessup take the old country lawyer to the cleaners?

  I call Ariana over. An internet search fails to sniff out any court action between Dover and Chemican. A search through the docs stashed in the Cloud comes up with “Squirely not found.” The only Dover is the white cliffs of.

  * * *

  It’s time for our evening tea. Arthur has a Brandenburg concerto going downstairs. These lovely pieces get a lot of play, because he doesn’t have many CDs and isn’t keen on learning how to find old friends online, friends like Johann Sebastian, Ludwig, and Wolfgang.

  While I was away for the day, Arthur evicted the fat chairs and dragged a sofa over. He rises from it, in his old-fashioned gallant way, as I enter with my tea. He motions toward the stereo. “Is it too loud?”

  “No. I’m getting into Bach.” The vigorous, driving melodies, the flow and complexity. I’d been raised on a diet of folk and jazz.

  Arthur enjoys our rituals under the moose, enjoys regaling me with lighthearted tales from Garibaldi Island. I’m learning its whole history, its cast of characters, its current nemesis: a foreign corporation that threatens to blight a spectacular limestone formation in dedicated parkland.

  Sometimes he turns sombre and talks about his youthful years in Vancouver, his cold, proper academic parents, his incarceration in a private boys’ school, his social awkwardness. Especially with girls, is what I’ve picked up.

  He closes The Poems of Catullus as I settle beside him, and asks how my day was.

  Though we’re not supposed to talk shop I tell him about the W.W. Squirely fax. Nancy is on it. She hopes to reach the old boy by phone tomorrow or Monday. If that doesn’t pan out, she’ll hire an agent in Missouri to poke around. I sound efficient, competent. Trying to impress him.

  He responds in Latin, and it sounds lovely and rhythmical and perplexing.

  “Catullus?”

  “‘Who scans the bright machinery of the skies and plots the hours of star-set and star-rise.’ In Wigham’s rather loose translation.”

  I get it. Talking about the case is against the rules. I ask about Margaret, and he brightens. She has next weekend free, no agenda. She’s intrigued at the prospect of staying in the house of a swindler name Punky Kiefer. She (allegedly) is thankful that I’m here to give him a booster shot of youthful zest.

  I offer to stay out of their way, but he says Margaret wants us to have meals together, like a family. “She’s that way. A 1970s hippie and a founding member of the Earthseed Commune, long since disbanded.” A melancholy, distant smile.

  There’s a long lag while we sip our tea. Finally, I go, “Is everything okay with you guys?” Another long pause. I feel stupid, I’ve been too bold.

  A sound halfway between a sigh and a throat clearing. “It’s my fault, really. There’s a woman back home who is incorrigibly attracted to me. We had an episode. And then a recent close call. Margaret knows. Most, not all.”

  It comes out hesitantly at first, becomes a flow. He seems to have shocked himself, says he has never shared this with anyone, this episode, this infidelity. Not even with his buddy, the local preacher. But I guess the urge to confide sins was building up, it’s bred into us, we all hunger for absolution.

  The Other Woman is an environmentally friendly potter named Taba. I get the impression of sexy, immodest, brash, used to getting what she wants. What she wanted was him between her legs. She didn’t have to work hard getting him there, is my impression. Factors included long-distance separations and Margaret Blake’s own brief, regretted affair.

  The close call had her between his legs, her face anyway — an act not consummated, so I don’t know why the big deal. Except that he told his wife a cleaned-up version that she doesn’t believe. Now he’s caught in a tangled net of half-truths and false denials even though he’s innocent, at least on the second count.

  Is he just unloading or is he asking advice? I go, “You don’t seem to be very good at lying, Arthur.”

  He barks a little sad laugh.

  I rehash a self-help line I’d read somewhere: “We can forgive marital lapses by our partners as long as we know we are loved.” True, I suspect, but what do I know? “I’m sure Margaret feels that way.”

  “I do love her. But she’s furious. She called Taba a scheming bitch.”

  “Well, that’s good. Her fury isn’t directed at you. She knows you’re a typical unthinking, libidinously subjugated male. You’re normal.”

  That’s pretty blunt, but he seems to take it okay. In fact, he can’t help laughing at himself a little. I say, “Anything else bothering you?”

  “I miss my dog.”

  I lean over and give him a hug. Then I leave him to his Latin poetry and clean up the kitchen and go upstairs, suddenly weary, wishing I had someone to love.

  7

  Tuesday, May 21

  As I dictate this it’s an hour and thirteen minutes after midnight. I arrived home an hour ago — angry and more scared than I care to admit, so scared that I sobered up with a bang.

  I checked all the doors and windows before I showered, making sure not to disturb Arthur’s sleep. I drank a lot of water. I set my alarm. I went to bed and tried to read. I got up and went to my desk, stared awhile at a blinking cursor, but my trembling fingers couldn’t work the keys.

  So instead, here’s my Victoria Day podcast:

  I remember waking late Monday morning, just shy of ten, still bummed out about having no lover, no partner. Wondering why, in the heat of young life, I was not having affairs and causing my lovers to writhe with guilt like Arthur. No one seems to want me but the trolls. And Azra Khan, though he has other matters on his mind right now, like his mother, with cancer — that’s probably why he seems distracted and passive in court.

  I had no agenda for the day, except a Panic Disorder benefit at eight p.m. But I did my run, to Harbourfront, a bad choice midday on a sunny long weekend when you must focus on finding openings between clumps of bare-legged walkers and joggers and avoiding head-on collisions.

  In the afternoon, while Arthur was away strategizing with Nancy, I couch-potatoed a Jays game in the TV room. I hoped for a glimpse of Howie’s reserved seats, but no foul balls went that way. The game was a disaster, eight-two for Boston.

  After which I biked
up to Cabbagetown to hang awhile with Lucy, in T.J. Gully’s cozy illegal. You enter by the leafy backyard. Three rooms and a bath, wallpapered with sixties rock posters: the Band, Stones, Doors, Byrds, Cream, Janis, Zeppelin.

  So after we get her water pipe going, Lucy goes, “I have a theory why Abbie Lee-Yeung is following you.”

  “Let me guess. She’s an undercover cop, like Sooky-Sue.”

  “That was a joke. This is different.”

  “Sweetie, all your theories are jokes. Like a teen juror getting it on with Azra Khan. Abbie just happened to be walking behind us.”

  “Twice on Friday, she followed you. You, not us.”

  “The first time, we were leaving the Sheraton when she walked in. Big deal.”

  “She was standing outside. She had stalked us from the courthouse. She isn’t interested in me. She wants to get you alone. She wants to proclaim her love for you.”

  This is why I love Lucy. She’s such a fraud.

  Ray was already at tonight’s venue, rehearsing. Before T.J. Gully went on his rehab he booked Panic Disorder for Squirrelly Moe’s, which is cashing in on the publicity from the trial. It is currently the most popular dive in town for the millennial-pseudo-hipster crowd. A fundraiser for the bees, with a substantial cover.

  At sunset, Lucy and I ponied up for a cab to Queen and Broadview, to Moe’s. I was so stoned by then I was at Paranoia Level Three, worried that Lucy was right: all those intense looks from the back row, from Juror Twelve. An idealistic young woman looking for a hero to love.

  * * *

  Bodies flying around, supposedly dancing. A woman whipping her T-shirt around, boobs flying. A couple getting it on under the staircase. Blow being openly snorted. A drunk guy bodily tossed from the stage by Mary Bumpo. The funder was oversold, overcrowded, the bouncers losing control.

  I was outside at the back having yet another toke when I heard the approaching sirens. I texted Lucy: I’m gone from this armpit.

  I lurched my way out to Queen through a smog of reefer, followed by others equally uninterested in a confrontation with the bylaw squad. We gathered at the streetcar stop as two flashing cruisers wheeled past us. Six or seven of us jumped on the first westbound 501.

  We were comrades, all high, and we congregated at the stern, talking and laughing. They wanted to know about the trial, how’s it going, who’s winning, let’s hear it for the bees, man, and what about that OPP dick who had a heart attack?

  I wasn’t paying attention to the big, hulking strap-hanger behind us, mainly because his back was to me, but when I got off at Beaconsfield I sensed him behind me — or put it this way, I smelled him, rancid and boozy, or maybe it was his padded jacket.

  Nobody else got off there, and as I strode north up my poorly lit street I could tell he was plodding behind me. I quickened my pace, darted a look back, saw my pursuer ten feet behind, faceless in the dark, jogging now, calling out: “Hey, baby, I’m hot for you, you wanna ball?”

  I was, like, freaking. “Crawl back to your cave, you creep.”

  He goes something like, “How do ya want it, Jew-girl, from the front or back?” Hoarse, slurred.

  He’s drunker than me, slow of foot, I figured he’ll never catch up at the speed I’m going, even in sandals. I sprint up the middle of the street, pulling off my pack, fumbling through its pockets for my phone.

  Interior lights are on at one house, upcoming, on my left. On my right, my darkened safe house looms.

  I know where you live. But he doesn’t, he has no idea that’s my house. I speed past it, not wasting my strength by screaming but, as I think back on it now, mostly not wanting to wake Arthur up, not wanting to rattle him, ruin his sleep. And for that reason, I don’t call 911, I don’t want cops and sirens.

  I had a better plan. Remember, I was pretty loaded. Anyway, I saw a chance for the nosy Neighbourhood Watchers across the street to be heroes, to actually catch a culprit, for it’s their house that was lit.

  So I dart left, open their wrought-iron gate, run up their walk, and, thank God, there’s the wife at the window, in a robe, binoculars at hand. She has observed me through them many times, coming and going.

  I pound on the door, ring the bell. Nobody comes. I’m frantic, the Nazi has seen me turn in here. There’s a plaque on the door: “Mr. and Mrs. Willis White.” I yell, “Mrs. White, help, let me in!”

  She yells back, “You don’t belong here! You belong across the road! Go away!” (Reflecting on this later, I was struck by the odd fixation on belonging. Were we, across the street, considered inferior?)

  Anyway, after her “Go away!” I yell, “He’s a rapist! A murderer!”

  A male voice: “We know what your game is. Get off our property or I call the police!”

  “Please fucking do!” But hadn’t I just told myself no police? “Wait!” I holler, then venture back to the sidewalk, and the skunky ogre is in retreat, slouching back to Queen Street.

  I take a circular backyard route to the swindler’s, enter by the kitchen, and now here I am, at my desk, talking to my voice recorder, rehashing the night. The padded jacket. It’s the guy Lucy spotted outside the Sorauren loft, sans toque. Same piece of rancid shit I chased on my bike, I’m sure. How was he able to hone in on me?

  Elementary, Dear Journal. He’d heard about the Squirrelly Moe’s funder, guessed I’d be there, hung around Moe’s, spotted me, followed me, and the rest is hysteria.

  8

  I am baggy-eyed, my brain is splintering, and I’m wrapped in a film of sweat. I may have slept two hours. It didn’t register until the caffeine and aspirins kicked in that I’d left my bike at Lucy’s. I ran like stink all the way, and arrived on the sixth floor of the courthouse six minutes after ten o’clock.

  And now, as I hustle into 6-1, I find it in session, everyone silently waiting for me, heads turned to stare at the pitiful wretch. Justice Donahue is deadpan as she looks up from whatever she’s doodling. I’m required to do the walk of shame to the prisoners’ dock before she deigns to address me.

  “I’m hoping, Ms. Levitsky, that you were kidnapped by aliens. Because nothing short of that will satisfy me.”

  Arthur’s expression asks, “Do you need help with this?” I shake him off. I’m going to lay it out for this anal arbiter. I stand, take a deep breath. “Last night, as I was returning from a benefit, walking alone down a dark street, I was pursued by a very large, inebriated Nazi who expressed a desire to have intercourse with me. He referred to me in a salacious manner as a Jew-girl. He used other language I don’t care to repeat here. I was able to outrun him and find shelter. I slept for maybe ninety minutes. I apologize for being six minutes late.”

  I sit between Lucy and Amy, who jointly embrace me. Judge Donahue seems unsure whether to absolve my sin or challenge me: Did you alert the police? But would she risk sounding distrustful? As she glances at the media, her nose wiggles, scenting censure — bullying me was not going to endear her to them, her sarcasm had already rung a wrong note.

  “Very well, I shall presume the authorities are dealing with the matter. Most regrettable indeed. Ah, Mr. Beauchamp, I believe you are still cross-examining. Can we bring Mr. Wakeling back in, please.”

  “A moment, please,” Arthur says, then leans to my ear: “My dear, dear Rivie, I am shocked beyond belief. Where did this happen? Never mind, I shall demand we recess for the day.”

  “No, please, I’m fine.” I’m not, but I don’t want to seem the cringing victim. “Can we talk at lunch? You need to finish taking down that company goon.” Clarkson Wakeling, he’s waiting to be ushered to the witness stand.

  Arthur pats my arm, walks off toward the jurors. I can’t tell where their collective heads are at. Some seem distressed, either at the peril I’d faced or at Donahue’s awkward reaction to it. Juror Ten, Mabel Sims, the tax branch auditor, is frowning, as if distrustful of the young Jezebel’s wild
claims.

  Abbie Lee-Yeung, however, is sending vibes of compassion and solidarity. The eye contact is intense. Maybe scary. She wants to proclaim her love for you. All sorts of weird, awkward scenarios come to mind.

  Lucy nudges me, whispers: “Please tell me you didn’t make all that up.”

  “Hope to die. What happened last night?”

  “Got shut down. No one busted. Got driven home. Got laid. You look like a wreck. Talk later.”

  Khan’s student legs it out of the room, presumably to check on my alibi. I am a rival for Khan’s affection, she’s dying to discover I lied about the Nazi as a deceitful play for the jury’s sympathy. To her disappointment, she’ll find a complaint on file: I texted Constable Louella Baker last night and she’d answered over her morning coffee: “On it. Wish you’d phoned. Let’s do lunch.”

  Arthur worries about my friendly relationship with a cop. Lunch will be his chance to size her up.

  Corporate apologist and conscripted flak-catcher Clarkson Wakeling does a nervous sidestep as Nancy crosses paths with him, on her way out, dialling her phone. W.W. Squirely’s number in Missouri, I’m guessing, as she continues her pursuit of the Dover file.

  Arthur thanks the Crown for copying him with the report from Chemican’s private investigators. He holds it aloft as he beams a smile at the witness. “Mr. Wakeling, when we broke on Friday, I think we’d established that Howell Griffin was a heavy cocaine user and that Archie Gooch was suspected to be his supplier and confidant. You have no issues with that?”

  Wakeling: “I don’t have all the facts, but I can’t disagree.”

  Beauchamp: “That theory was put forward by your investigators, correct?”

  “It was raised, yes.”