by Terry Fallis
“Two things,” she shouted.
I could actually feel the warm currents of her breath.
“First, in my hotel room, there’s a big brown envelope in my suitcase. You must read what’s inside.”
“What? Why? I don’t get it.”
She shook her head. “There’s no time to explain. Just read it. Second, if you make it through the next few minutes, promise me you’ll stop living my dream and start living yours.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “What are you doing, Bobbie?”
“Just promise me!” she shouted above the engine noise. I nodded but had no idea what was happening. Then she watched and waited until the guard turned slightly away from us and was clearly focused on the chopper. He was using one hand to communicate with the pilot as the helicopter hovered just above us. Then Bobbie pushed herself to her feet and started running.
“Hey! Wait! Don’t. Bobbie!” I shouted. But she was gone.
She was surprisingly fast for a larger, stocky woman with chronic back issues. I wanted to push myself to my feet, but felt paralyzed watching Bobbie as she sprinted across the rooftop towards the guard.
He turned too late. She was already halfway to him. He looked terrified and opened his mouth, but the roar of the chopper swallowed his shout. Then I watched as he raised the rifle. There was a pop and a flash from the muzzle. Bobbie’s left shoulder snapped back and something hit the wood above my head. Splinters landed in my lap. I ducked but kept my eyes on Bobbie. He’d winged her, but she was moving too fast and carrying too much momentum for it to matter much. She hit him squarely at full speed, just like she’d taught our high school defensive linemen to do when sacking the quarterback. Even with the impact, he still hung on to the rifle, but it was now aimed harmlessly out to sea. They were both moving as a single unit now. I was on my feet by then.
It was hard to process what happened next. It was like a mirage shimmering in the heat’s haze. They both just disappeared over the railing. They were gone in an instant.
My heart felt like it stopped. My mind emptied. I realized I was moving towards the chopper. I could see the panic in the pilot’s eyes through the windscreen. Something moved me then. Bobbie had acted. I had to as well, or I’d regret it later. I ran to my golf bag a few feet away and pulled out a four-iron. Even with my hands tie-wrapped together, I was still able to swing the club around my head and launch it at the chopper. It hit the windscreen club-head first, and bounced off harmlessly. But the pilot reacted as if he’d been hit by an Exocet missile. He jerked the controls and wobbled violently in the air. Anger swept through me as I realized that Bobbie was probably gone, I mean really gone. I just started hurling club after club. One hit the rotor and made a big noise, but didn’t seem to do much damage. As rage consumed me, I was oblivious to any danger I was in and kept chucking golf clubs at the chopper. I think the pilot had had enough. He turned in the air, the tail rotor heading my way. He started to climb away from the building but I grabbed one last club, I think it might have been my pitching wedge, and threw it at the helicopter.
My wedge hit the tail rotor and made a sickening metallic grinding sound. A flash of flame shot from the tail and smoke billowed. The helicopter immediately began rotating. With each turn, I could see the pilot frantically trying to regain control. The tail bounced off the railing and the chopper somehow cleared the building. But it was no longer going up. It almost gently pirouetted down through the air, leaving a corkscrew of smoke in its wake, until it dipped out of my view. I moved closer to the railing to track the chopper’s fall. I was suddenly aware of people screaming below as they watched the crash unfold. When the turning, burning helicopter hit the water, it was no longer such a gentle descent. It hit the waves upright, as if landing, but at much too high a speed. The sound reached me a second after the impact. There was no explosion. This was not a movie. The chopper turned on its side as the blades dug into the waves and snapped off. Then it was quiet as what remained of the helicopter bobbed in the sea.
My brain came back online. Maybe Bobbie’s speed had carried the guard and her far enough out away from the building to hit the water. Could you survive a fall from that height into water? I rushed the rest of the way to the rail and scanned the sea below. I saw nothing. Then I looked directly below me. They hadn’t made it nearly far enough out to reach the sea. They never could have. I could see their bodies on the ground, with little space between them. In the movies, the victims of such falls always have their limbs arrayed at weird angles. Not so here. Bobbie and the guard both looked like they might just be grabbing a quick nap. But even in my state, I knew neither would be waking up.
In the near silence, I could hear my own breathing and another noise, almost a moaning, that I realized was coming from me. I saw people below rushing towards Bobbie and the guard. Some of them looked up, but I couldn’t even muster the resolve to wave. I felt so drained that I could barely move. Somehow, I lurched over to where my cellphone had come to rest on the roof. Despite my secured wrists, I managed to dial 911, without even knowing if it would work in Dubai. It did. I don’t remember what I said, but it was enough. Then I sat back down and lowered my head between my knees to fight off the nausea that had come over me. It didn’t work. I threw up and cried at the same time. It was so hot. I thought I might pass out. I knew Bobbie was gone. But it was so hard to accept that I had to remind myself every few seconds that it had really happened. That she had taken the guard over the rail to save me. Once, I even went back to the edge of the roof to confirm her body was still there below me. Then I guess I just curled up next to the rail in the heat and blubbered. I’m told that’s how they found me fifteen minutes later when Dubai’s version of a SWAT team burst onto the rooftop from a fire escape stairwell. Another chopper approached, circled briefly, and then departed. I learned later it was the director and videographer, ready to start the second stage of our little promotion.
* * *
—
IT TOOK NEARLY five hours before they let me back into my hotel room. It was very strange being there by myself, especially because Bobbie and I had already opened the doors connecting our two adjoining suites. I knew what I had to do then, but I didn’t rush. I didn’t know what I’d find, so I was careful, and deliberate, and scared. While I had trouble remembering everything that had unfolded on the roof high over the Arabian Sea, I recalled my last exchange with Bobbie Davenport word for word.
I followed her rooftop instructions, even though it felt like such an invasion of privacy to be looking through her suitcase. I found the envelope. Princess Margaret Hospital was printed in the upper left-hand corner. I opened it. My fingers were trembling. To be honest, all of me was trembling. I just wasn’t sure whether it was leftover stress and fear from the roof or new anxiety from what I held in my hands. The printed form looked so benign, but across the top it read MRI Results Report. Then I read the word. Glioblastoma. Just one word. Glioblastoma. I was sure I’d heard it before. I pulled out my iPhone, and Google helped jog my memory. A few years before, Gord Downie, the lead singer of the Tragically Hip, one of Canada’s most popular rock bands, had endured a long, almost noble, and terribly wrenching public decline after his diagnosis with glioblastoma. The medical authorities on the Internet, whom we all seem to trust implicitly, apparently agreed on at least one aspect of this aggressive and often inoperable form of brain cancer: it was terminal.
This prognosis was reinforced by a brochure I also found in the envelope. It bore the cheery title Medical Assistance in Dying and End-of-Life Decisions. Finally, to tie it all up into a nice, neat little package of grief, Bobbie’s will was among the papers she’d gathered in one place. It was a simple will leaving all her worldly possessions to a number of charities that supported writers and public libraries in Canada. Such a Bobbie thing to do. I should also note that I was named as her executor. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised.
That night, I slept like a baby. In other words, I woke u
p every two hours or so and cried for a while. By the morning, all the questions that had swirled in my head about Bobbie’s rooftop charge were answered. It all fell into place. It all made sense to me. Bobbie would have deplored a slow and steady deterioration, likely accompanied by pain, not to mention the memory loss, confusion, and reduced brain function. She’d have never accepted that. What unfolded atop the Burj Al Arab was the Hollywood way out. It was perfect. It was Bobbie saving us both.
Chapter 11
JULY 2020
THE AUTHORITIES FIGURED it out pretty quickly, calling it a botched commercial kidnapping. It wasn’t about religion, nationalism, ideology, terrorism, or territory. It was just about money. I guess I was a good target, given how much money I had amassed in so short a time. The pilot suffered only minor injuries in the forced sea landing and confessed quickly and completely. His co-conspirator, the Kalashnikov-wielding security guard who was supposed to protect us, died after his unscheduled flight on Air Bobbie. According to the chopper pilot, the plan had been to kidnap Bobbie and me, then kill Bobbie to convince me of their seriousness, and finally have me buy my own survival for a $10 million e-transfer. It would have worked, too, if they’d managed to get us onto the chopper and off that roof.
Finally, after another morning of repetitive meetings with the police, I flew to Toronto on a private jet arranged by the president of the United Arab Emirates and flown by the most experienced pilots in their air force. My parents had been ready to fly directly to Dubai after the story broke, but I persuaded them that I was okay to make the flight home alone. I’m not sure that was true, but I just wanted to get out of there. I wrote Bobbie’s obit on the plane using the Conway Stewart Wellington she’d given me. There was no one else to do it. Bobbie’s parents had passed on several years earlier and she had no siblings, so it fell to me. I was simultaneously honoured and anxious, and though the task was difficult, they were some of the most satisfying sentences I have ever written. I made sure Bobbie Davenport was seen as the hero she truly was. But everyone would know that soon enough, without the obit. The CCTV cameras from multiple rooftop angles provided all the dramatic and traumatic footage needed to secure Bobbie’s place in the heroism hall of fame. When I was still in mid-flight, the sequence began playing endlessly on television and popping up everywhere online. I didn’t need to watch it. I know what happened. I was there.
With the onboard Internet service, I also managed, via a series of emails, to arrange for a memorial service in her honour at Timothy Eaton, one of the largest churches in Toronto. I didn’t think she was religious. We’d never really discussed it, so it was quite possible she was an atheist. But holding a memorial service in a big church was not about piety and devotion. It just seemed an appropriate and convenient location for a gathering to honour her memory.
They met me at Toronto’s Pearson airport. With Dad at the wheel, my mother held on to me in the back of the Tesla all the way home. I’ve never felt safer and more secure than I did during that week or so at home with my family. For that brief respite, it was almost as if the last seven years, and the extraordinary events they had brought with them, had never happened. My parents wanted me to talk to a therapist or counsellor to make sure I processed and dealt with the grief driven by what unfolded on the roof of the Burj Al Arab. I didn’t mind the idea in principle, but I managed to persuade them that it was all still too fresh. That I needed some distance and perspective before professional help would really be beneficial. And no, I hadn’t processed and dealt with it all yet. I knew that much. But I had plans that could not be delayed.
A few days later, the church was packed. I had no idea so many people would come. Though Bobbie Davenport didn’t have any living direct family, there was no shortage of students, colleagues, and friends attending her memorial service. A sizable contingent from the Ladies’ Golf Club of Toronto was there, including Duke, who wept from the time he entered the church to the time he slipped out the door a few minutes before the benediction. I was very happy to see several of Bobbie’s fellow PGA caddies and even a few Tour players in the church paying their respects. Even the commissioner of the PGA attended. Of course, Lisa Griffiths and Susan Maddocks both dropped everything to be there.
Professor Gunnarsson was not able to make the long flight from Australia in time for the service, but he did call me and express his regret at Bobbie’s passing. I was impressed with the level of empathy he was somehow able to muster given his filter-free tendencies.
Three television satellite trucks were stationed in the parking lot, but with Susan’s help, I managed to avoid doing any media interviews and instead issued a prepared statement that would have to suffice for the time being.
I didn’t see her until I stood at the lectern at the front of the church for my remarks. She sat several rows back, right on the centre aisle. Alli was with her parents and gazed at me with such sympathy, support, and strength that I looked nowhere else until I was finished my piece. As it turned out, I didn’t need my notes. I just needed the expression on Alli’s face. With my eyes on hers, and a couple of deep breaths, I started.
“Bobbie would have been thrilled that so many of you are here today. But let’s face it, she would have hated the idea of an event like this to celebrate her life. Well, too bad, Bobbie, we’re doing it anyway.”
The line earned a few chuckles from the assembly and that calmed me down a bit more.
“Bobbie Davenport was my teacher, my coach, my counsellor, my caddie, and most of all, my friend. An obscure Scandinavian kinesiology journal and a tape measure brought us together in the fall of 2013 and altered both our lives forever. Shortly after we first met, we discovered a few shared interests. We both believed that writing, storytelling, literature, and the power of words on the page could change the world. We both seemed to have been blessed with more than our fair share of curiosity. And on a smaller scale, our constantly inky fingers betrayed a common fascination with the esoteric world of fountain pens. Strange as it seems, golf wasn’t one of those shared interests, though Bobbie Davenport was an NCAA star at Stanford and a perennial club champion at her beloved Ladies’ Golf Club of Toronto. A wonky back kept her from greater golf glory, but she never lost her love for the game, even if I never quite gained mine.”
I paused for a moment and looked out at the crowd. It had grown so quiet, I wasn’t sure they were all still there. They were, all looking up at me. I breathed deeply to control the grief that sometimes distorted my voice.
“Yes, I confess, I still don’t love the game of golf, though I know that sounds churlish and ungrateful in the face of what it has given me. My DNA bestowed the unlikely gift of a body that was almost perfectly suited for the game. But if I’m honest, neither my heart nor my head was similarly inclined, and they likely never will be. Not only did Bobbie Davenport, with the help of Professor Ingemar Gunnarsson, make the discovery that I just might have a future in golf, but she was there the whole way to help me seize it. You see, Bobbie Davenport was also a brilliant conversationalist—and that was a blessing. Paradoxically, she knew very well that the key to our success on the course was keeping my mind as far away from golf as possible. So we talked…a lot…about anything and everything. We talked our way around every course I ever played. I can’t begin to tell you the broad range of topics that occupied us during tournaments. I don’t know anyone else who could have carried me through all those rounds simply through the power of conversation. After all, as I have observed many times, golf is a game that takes quite a long time to play. Bobbie Davenport made the hours slip by, and I will be forever grateful.”
I prattled on for another ten minutes or so and remember very little of it. I never mentioned the glioblastoma diagnosis. I just didn’t think it was my place to reveal it. I do recall struggling to maintain my composure at a few points, but I managed to carry on, even if my voice quavered now and then. Several others spoke with great affection, telling stories from Bobbie’s collegiate golfing days, her am
azing reign at the Ladies’ Golf Club of Toronto, her teaching career, and her time with me on the Tour. I remember more of those remarks than I do of my own. I had no idea where I was on the classic journey through the stages of grief. But it felt like Bobbie’s memorial pushed me at least a few more steps along the path.
Alli found me at the reception in the church auditorium afterwards. She enfolded me in her arms and just held me. She said nothing until the hug had gone on for quite some time. I almost lost it, but squeezed my eyes tight to keep them dry. Even when we pulled apart, she held on to my hands.
“Adam, I know nothing I can say will change anything, but I’m so sorry for everything. For what happened to Ms. Davenport. For what happened to you on that roof. It just seems unreal. It feels like a miracle you’re standing here in front of me.”
We talked for a bit. She told me she was heading into her second year of the master’s program in creative writing at the University of Toronto. Good for her. It was wonderful and powerful to see her again and to be so close to her after so long. It felt like no time had passed. It felt like high school again. But it wasn’t.
* * *
—
YOU MIGHT THINK I’d have withdrawn from the Olympics under the circumstances. No one would have blamed me—no one except perhaps Bobbie. She’d been so pumped when golf was declared an Olympic sport for the Rio games in 2016. Only Augusta and the Masters meant more to her, and not by much. Our plan had been to fly to Tokyo early to get acclimated to the time change and play a few practice rounds on the Olympic course. So I went on my own. No one could talk me out of it. Not my parents, not Susan Maddocks, not Lisa Griffiths. No one. When I refused to reconsider, it was strongly recommended that my family accompany me to Tokyo to provide the support I needed so soon after my traumatic experience high above the Arabian Sea. But I said no, several times. I can’t really explain why. I claimed they would be a distraction, that I really needed to focus, that I wanted to follow the plan Bobbie and I had carefully laid out, even if Bobbie wasn’t there. I must have been persuasive, because eventually everybody backed off and I was permitted to go by myself.