As he crept down to the basement, his heart sank even lower. The storage area, home of all the kegs, was a dank, terrifying warren of potential slips, falls, and concussions, and Vicar was positive that it was a haven for rats. His little flashlight barely carved through the gloom, but, revolted, he could hear an unwholesome skittering.
His phone rang. Jacquie and Poutine were at the door, wanting to see the place. Vicar climbed back up the steps from the cellar and wandered to the back entrance to let them in.
As they toured the building, Jacquie became increasingly alarmed at the state of disrepair.
“Are you sure this hasn’t been condemned?”
Vicar knew she was joking, but still hesitated. “Uhh … I don’t think so. Wouldn’t there be a sign posted somewhere?”
“Yes, the difference between a grand hotel and a condemned building is a sign posted in a central location,” Jacquie said sarcastically.
They both laughed. Jacquie picked her way through the coffee shop as if walking through a field of cow patties, wary of the detritus littering her path. Near the doorway, she jumped back with a little gasp.
“Aaah! Is that a crab?”
She was looking up at a cobweb of gigantic dimensions, in the centre of which sat an arachnid of epic size. It looked as if it could kidnap a calf with ease.
Vicar had never been afraid of bugs, but he was nonetheless impressed with this one and gave her a wide berth. What in heaven’s name had she been dining on to get that large? The spider just sat there motionless, like an eerie surveillance camera, staring at her environment, primed to attack at the first indication of incoming snacks. Sitting in her web, she looked like a giant wall hanging that you might find at the home of your slightly barmy aunt. When the time was right, Vicar would move Madame Spider to new digs, but for now, he decided she would be an unofficial mascot.
They peeked through an opening and saw that the coffee shop kitchen had made food for the beer parlour, too. Staff would have simply passed plates in one direction or the other, depending on where the order had come from. It must have made for a busy kitchen.
Some days had been nuts at the Agincourt — like payday. All the town’s residents knew to stay clear because you’d never get a seat unless you were a big, loud, thirsty logger, and by closing time you’d probably need an ice pack for your injuries. Those days were gone, but the memories, and perhaps a few of the marks, lived on.
Poutine had blown several of his paycheques here and had some fond recollections. He may not have made the smartest use of his time back then, but those were the only salad days he’d ever have, so he filed them under “good memories.” But even he had to admit that they’d spent most of their days well past the line of sobriety and good behaviour. Decades later, he knew the difference between a joke and sheer cruelty, but back then he probably hadn’t been too clear. None of them had been. His first broken leg had been the result of a stupid prank by his buddies who were three sheets to the wind, guffawing smugly and lashing about drunkenly with chainsaws. He broke his leg running from them, but it could have been worse — much worse.
Jacquie, Vicar, and Poutine pushed through the swinging kitchen doors and bumped around in the half dark. The kitchen was well used, indeed, and would need a major makeover before it could operate again. That was if the structure itself could pass inspection. They peered into vats and stoves and ovens and grimaced at the collected filth of the commercial kitchen. Jacquie couldn’t believe that she’d sometimes come in here thinking it’d be better than cooking for herself.
Another pair of swinging doors took them into the beer parlour — they entered right beside the ghastly metal-and-glass bar that Vicar so despised. Jacquie looked at the jumble on the floor, the overturned chairs, the cardboard boxes partially filled with junk, and felt her stomach sink. The inside was worse than the outside, which looked as drab and unappealing as a dinner accidentally dropped onto the floor. The building had been painted a shade of pink that had no doubt been charming and fashionable at one time, but it had faded unevenly over the years to give the place an air of abandonment. It was reminiscent of a gone-to-seed drive-in theatre somewhere in the lonely desert. Someone had repainted up to eye level in a tedious beige, and even that coating had grown mouldy and faded, leaving the entire outer structure looking fire singed and bomb damaged.
Jacquie wrinkled her nose. No matter how you sliced it, this would be a big job. Even if Vicar wanted to knock it all down and start again, the demolition would be a huge endeavour and not something that either of them had any experience with. She herself certainly didn’t know where to start. She gave Vicar a quick glance and then looked away again. This was starting to feel like a great big fat white elephant that they’d have to fish out of a money pit.
Meanwhile, Poutine was stuffing quarters into the antique vending machine and repeatedly pulling the plunger, having found the cord and plugged it into the wall. He rapaciously gobbled the well-past-expiry-date treats, one after the other. Jacquie covered her mouth and winced as he fairly inhaled a Twinkie that was at minimum one year old, although who honestly knew how long it had sat in that old machine? It might have been languishing in there since the Great Depression, for God’s sake.
Little bits of cake gobbed out of Poutine’s mouth as he blurted out, “I love this place!”
Forty-Two / Caduceus Oil
Vicar was deeply lost in thought on a very slow day. The weather was poor, and no one was venturing outside, or so it seemed. As he stocked the shelf with gin, he was surprised by a customer who seemed to suddenly appear. Vicar hadn’t heard him come in.
“Word is you’re the new owner of the old Agincourt, Mr. Vicar.”
It was common knowledge now. Vicar glanced up from the box he was unloading. “Yes, yes, I am. I’m still wondering what to do with it. It’s awfully rundown.”
“Well, you could refurbish it, couldn’t you?”
“Oh, I suppose so, if I go into debt up to my eyeballs and then some. I just can’t see that being sensible in a place that’s so seasonal.”
The customer looked vaguely familiar. He seemed wise to the topic and made some valuable observations, which Vicar found a refreshing change to the unhelpful responses of blithe, untethered enthusiasm he had gotten from most everyone else except Jacquie — and she was perhaps a little too realistic about the risks.
“But you see, the main attraction would just be the pub, and there’s only so much pull you can exert way out here in the country …”
Vicar trailed off. Everyone here knew the vicissitudes of rural, seasonal life. It was a constant worry.
“I think you might be overlooking the obvious, Tony. May I call you Tony? I’m Gary.”
They shook hands. Vicar looked down at Gary’s incongruous snakeskin boots. How unusual.
“The way I see it, you are the big draw, not a cold pint of beer. You are the Liquor Vicar to a lot of people. They know about your amazing skills.”
“Man, oh man … That’s all hoo-ha. I’m just a guy.”
“I wouldn’t say that. I know the stories. They’re building a legend around you. And legends can be powerful,” Gary said. “You’re a music fan, aren’t you? Two hundred years ago, newspapers claimed Paganini had such a spooky talent that he could make his violin burst into flames. It was BS, but it filled the concert halls. He never claimed it himself, but he didn’t try to stop people from believing it, either.” Vicar had heard that story before sometime in the past. “If I had an advantage like that, I would most definitely use it.”
“What, and bless lottery tickets for a living? I won’t scam people. That would be … disgusting.”
“No, not at all. No scam. That would ruin everything, make it cheap. And it would never last. But I would consider just giving everyone an opportunity to meet you, lay eyes on you. Maybe shake your hand. The power of suggestion is strong.”
Vicar had watched this very phenomenon in action, aware that it was occurring, yet not quite b
elieving his eyes. He hadn’t had to lie about anything. In fact, he hadn’t even needed to speak. Everyone else had covered that nicely.
“Other than feeling a little happier now, I really haven’t changed one bit.” Vicar shrugged.
“With respect, I doubt that. There is no effect without some cause.”
Vicar twisted his head and looked off into the distance for a beat. He had indeed been through massive personal changes and had failed to credit them at all. He was Explosive Diarrhea Wedding Elvis no more. He had been so observant of the world around him, yet blind to himself.
Gary continued like the smoothest salesman. “Some folks measure success through purchasing power, how many toys they own. But at a certain point, just buying stuff doesn’t work anymore. They give up, maybe get a divorce, and hire lawyers to fight over all the stuff they bought. Then they die, and it was all for nothing.”
This line of talk made Vicar prick up his ears. It sounded right.
Gary leaned on the corner of a wire display rack and casually crossed one snakeskin boot in front of the other. “Sometimes folks need someone else to put it all into context for them. Someone to help them gain perspective. They spend so much time worrying about affording stuff that any sense of wonder they have is left immature, stunted. They really don’t spend a minute developing wonder as a mental tool. Wonder can cause explosions of inspiration, or subtle nuances of the spirit.”
Yes, thought Vicar. This guy understands. Awfully heavy for a friendly chat in a booze shop, but illuminating just the same. On reflection, Vicar knew that, for all his failings, he had never intentionally overlooked the whimsical, the kooky, or the theme that threaded through.
“These folks are drawn to someone who represents fully formed wonder,” Gary continued. “They want to be in that presence or get into that circle because they hope they can just fix everything by contact or osmosis — sort of make up for their lack.”
Vicar was feeling strongly persuaded by this man’s words. Where the heck had he stumbled in from?
Gary grabbed a bottle of expensive gin and looked it over. “They’ll move heaven and earth to make that kind of connection, Tony. They’ll usually find it’s a disappointment, a cheap facade, no meat on the bones. But occasionally, they are right to make the effort. You don’t have to be Nelson Mandela to make a difference. Sometimes the little old lady down the road changes lives, too.”
Vicar jolted; did this guy mean Frankie? How could Gary know about his connection to her? He thought of her and how his own neighbourly concern had given rise to her final act of generosity, which she bestowed upon him, thus changing and rerouting his entire path forward. There was no doubt that Frankie had wanted greater good to come of her gesture. She had been, it seemed, a woman with a plan.
Gary looked up at Vicar, underscoring the underlying point with his eyes. He was suggesting that Vicar could make a difference just by being himself. Vicar was not so sure.
“In your case,” Gary concluded, “all you’re doing is saying hello, nothing further promised or implied. They might come from far away to meet you, and if they do, it’ll be darn thoughtful of you to have a hotel room available for the night and a cold pint of beer. Don’t you think?”
With Vicar’s help, he selected one bottle of very expensive wine and then departed, shaking Vicar’s hand as he left.
“Remember, sometimes it only takes an ounce to swing a scale the other direction. Take good care, Tony.”
“Thanks. See you around.”
Vicar gazed at the Scotches on the far wall, lost in thought for a moment or two, before turning to get another look at the departing man. But the parking lot was completely empty. He squinted in confusion for a second, then shrugged it off.
It occurred to him that he should restock the bottle of expensive wine. Poutine never left too many of them on the shelf, because then they wouldn’t seem so rare. But as Vicar passed the rack, he stopped dead. Nothing was missing from the shelf; it was still fully loaded. The bottle of expensive wine had not moved. But Gary had just bought the sole bottle on display — of that, Vicar was sure. He’d handed the bottle over himself. When he went to the computer, he could find no evidence of the transaction that had happened only two minutes ago. It was not listed there. There had to be some mistake. He ran the whole thing through in his mind, concerned that he was starting to lose his marbles.
And then it clicked. He did know the guy, in a way. He recognized that face, all right. Gary had been Julie Northrop’s boyfriend, the driver at the accident scene whose life Vicar couldn’t save. Had he just received advice from a dead man?
Forty-Three / The Past Is Prologue
Serena lay in her hospital bed, wigless for a change. Her spiky hair was sticking up in an unkempt mess. The room was guarded by a large, paunchy man with a serious look on his face and a flashlight on his belt the size of a baseball bat.
Wracked with pain and drugged, but insistent, Serena had been requesting “the Vicar” again and again. He did not come.
Her confederates were in various states of disrepair. She’d been told Jeet was hanging on for dear life. At the moment, she couldn’t decide if she was still mad, or if she forgave him for attempting to kill her. He had always been the one with the most doubt. Probably the smartest. But not smart enough. Somehow, she knew that Vicar would have wanted her to forgive.
Her shoulder was patched up and tender. A tube led from her arm to an IV tree, and she was connected to a monitor that would beep if she showed signs of deterioration. Her other arm was handcuffed to the bed frame. Lying there floating in misery and confusion, she knew one thing for certain: Vicar was the first man she had ever met who made her consider the possibility that not everyone in the world was out for himself. He was the first man who hadn’t tried to wrench her power away. Maybe life didn’t always have to be combat, dominance, or submission. Maybe some people cared about more than gaining an advantage. Maybe, just maybe, a man would give up everything for the woman he loved. And maybe some people just glowed a little bit.
Serena had felt a kind of spirit within him. He was not cold and reptilian. He was something completely different. How to put it? Human. Not fake. Safe. What was the right word? He had been willing to swap his life for Jacquie’s, and as badly as Serena had wanted him, the gesture had been hard to ignore. Maybe a bit of that love was meant for her, too. And, as hard as it was to swallow, maybe some people were simply good.
The nurse gave her another shot. It made the pain abate, but Serena knew it wasn’t the medicine she truly needed. She closed her eyes and tried to sleep.
---
At Liquor, having called her over for an impromptu meeting, Vicar said to Jacquie, “You would never believe me if I told you. I just know we hafta do it. We must find a way. I’m certain of it now.” The tone in his voice was determined and completely serious.
Jacquie was torn. She could tell that he wasn’t fooling around, but she couldn’t imagine what new and abstruse artistic vision had propelled his very sudden total commitment.
“What happened, then? A bolt from the blue?”
“If I said that it was something like that, would you think I’d fallen out of my tree?”
“You fell out of your tree years ago.”
“Right then,” he said, ignoring her dig, “let’s just call it a hunch, then.”
Miss C. Jacqueline O’Neil of Tyee Lagoon, British Columbia, never would have thought she’d consent to the biggest deal of her life based on an eccentric’s hunch, but after an hour’s worth of quibbling with Vicar, she finally ceased her resistance. She realized that, even if it was a swing and a miss, they could still sell the hotel. It was an inheritance, after all. And for heaven’s sake, it was legally his. He was clearly suggesting that it was theirs. She realized what that meant.
---
After two weeks of wandering around in a funk of inexplicable irascibility, Poutine, in a move that surprised even himself, volunteered to move Liquor onto th
e site of the old coffee shop, forsaking the location that had been his home for over twenty years. The new site was more than large enough, and there was space for warehousing, too. The three of them agreed that they would gut it and make it the new, improved Liquor, hard by the pub, under what they hoped would eventually become a boutique hotel.
Poutine was knee deep in emotions about this move. To Vicar and Jacquie, it was a financial lifeline to an embryonic start-up. To Poutine, it was quite literally an act of faith in his adopted family. He had already realized that these kids, as he thought of them, were the nearest thing to kin he had.
Running a business was hard. Running it with your wife — and he dearly hoped Vicar would be smart enough to marry Jacquie someday — was probably even tougher. She was une belle fille, as they would have said in Montreal. Poutine considered himself a buffer, there to absorb any of the yuck that might come down the pike in the future. He would never marry himself, of that he felt certain, not unless a gal came around who liked Chevys and Vanna White. But he could maybe be close enough to get a little taste of what it might have been like. He had never planned for a big move like this, but then again, he had never planned to be a bachelor nearing sixty, either. Now that the opportunity presented itself to become part of this great undertaking, he jumped at it. For a man who’d spent his whole life taking pride in his independence, being part of this group felt a little claustrophobic at times but cozy all the same. Plus, they had Twinkies.
---
Farley sat alone in a booth at the pancake house and peered again at the dog-eared newspaper account of the hostage incident, which he kept folded up in the pocket of his jacket, a burgundy blazer made of a flammable fabric, with smile pockets and grime-stained piping. He reread for perhaps the twentieth time the paragraph in which he was mentioned as the quiet hero of the whole thing. One of the papers had printed a photo of him playing bass guitar onstage in his best toque, and referred to him as a “Real Life El Kabong.” He liked that. He knew it was silly, but how could anyone take you seriously if you couldn’t laugh at yourself? It was a damn sight better than Connor Rea. He liked it a lot.
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