Death in Cold Type

by C. C. Benison

  “Really? For Mass?”

  “No, no. During the week. Usually in the afternoons. Yes, he used to come here quite regularly for a time. Of course—” She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “—I don’t know why he came here so often. Father Saunders never said.” She straightened in her chair and intoned, “The relationship between priest and penitent is a privileged one.”

  And it never rains in California.

  A few memories:

  Michael and Merritt, dressed up and tidy, their mother Lillian ushering them into the Rossiters’ big white Lincoln on Sunday mornings. Stevie on her beautiful blue Schwinn Breeze waving from her front lawn, as Lillian cautiously backed onto the Crescent.

  An overheard conversation, laced with misgiving, between her parents and some neighbours. Lillian was now attending Mass every morning. “A coping strategy,” her mother had explained. The expression was novel to her ten-year-old ears.

  Walking alone through evening mist along the shore at the rambling Rossiter cabin in Lake-of-the-Woods. A noisy weekend party with a dozen college friends of Michael’s, a September farewell to summer as the college year loomed—her first university year, Michael’s third. She, feeling miserably out of place, younger than most, wondering why she was invited, oblivious to another’s footfalls. Out of the veil of white, a face emerges, and like a dream, a kiss. In a moment, the barrier that was their shared childhood is broken.

  And Michael, in bed with her one morning, in her first apartment on Macmillan. His back to her. She connecting his freckles with one of her Rapidograph pens. He describing some dialectical metaphysical blather from a philosophy course, his arts elective that year. He summarized his position. She stopped cold. It was something the Pope might have said. “What did you draw?” he’d said, lifting his neck from the pillow and craning as if he could see. “Nothing, just shapes,” she’d replied dully. But it had been a floor plan, for the first floor of her dream house. He forgot to turn around in the mirror later, and Stevie had scrubbed the markings off for him in the shower. A few months later, that morning in bed, that conversation, would come back to her with terrible force.

  11

  Winnipeg Life

  “So, how’s Hubris Incorporated this morning?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Hey, you called me, remember?”

  “Well, I didn’t mean for you to come over.” Axel, on his knees on the floor, threw a file bound by elastic bands into a cardboard box.

  “Fine. I’ll leave.” Leo surveyed the room. Twelve months and nine issues of Winnipeg Life later, the magazine’s office in Artspace was a ghost of its former self. The walls were bare but for a framed cover of the first edition, chalk-white, here and there pocked or gouged as if someone had punched them. Leo recalled the launch party he and Ishbel had attended the previous September: food, wine, pristine walls, an enormous mock-up of volume I, issue I, lots of optimism, and Axel practically hugging himself.

  “So, the rumours are true,” he said.

  “And you didn’t call to commiserate?”

  “You haven’t called me. I haven’t talked to you all summer. It’s a two-way street, buddy-boy.”

  He watched Axel throw another folder into the box. Unfolded document boxes leaned against one wall, while a pyramid of bound and taped boxes stamped with WL anchored a corner of the irregularly shaped room. Unsold, undistributed, and otherwise unloved copies of the magazine, presumably. The only other object left in the room besides a filing cabinet was Axel’s desk, which was covered with papers and the usual office detritus waiting to be packed.

  “When do you have to be out of here?”

  “End of the month. Which is two days away.”

  “So, it’s really kaput, is it?”

  “Not kaput. We’ve merely suspended publication for the time being.”

  “You’re not seriously going to try and get it going again.”

  Axel carried on slamming files into the box.

  “I told you a city magazine wouldn’t work,” Leo continued, almost enjoying his I-told-you-so moment in the sun. “Winnipeg is wholesaleville. Even the rich are cheapshits here.”

  “It was working fine, Leo. It’s a cash-flow thing. First, the Arts Council decided to change its eligibility requirements. Then the Department of Culture was about to hand over some more funding in the spring, but the government changed hands—”

  “So, big deal. You tried. You failed. Some government money got pissed away—nothing new there. Move on.”

  Axel pointed to the wall. “Get me one of those folded-up things, would you? And close the door.”

  Leo complied, noting as he had when he’d walked in that some wag had attached two question marks after the words “Winnipeg Life” on the door. Axel rose, dusted the knees of his jeans, and took the box from Leo. “It’s not just government money,” he said, frowning at the instructions on the side of the box. “Fuck, why do they have to make a fucking box complicated?”

  “Here, give it to me.” Leo cleared a space on the desk and began unfolding the box. “What do you mean, ‘not just government money’?”

  Axel glowered. “I put some of my own money in.”

  Leo looked up. Axel and his ability to latch onto respectable sums at the right moment was always at least half a mystery. He, however, had been instrumental in generating part of Axel’s first tidy pile.

  Once upon a time, at Clear Lake, where Axel’s parents, Otto and Clare Werner, owned a cottage, two young men freshly out of college and avoiding employment, were drinking at the Southgate Hotel. One of them, Leo Fabian, responding to a call of nature, went into the toilet and there, while contemplating the meaning of life on a cold hard seat, heard two men come in. Thinking they were alone, the two began conversing about a drug drop, even unto exact time and coordinates. When Leo didn’t return after half an hour, Axel went in to see if he had passed out. He found Leo frozen in the stall with fear and excitement, his mind roiling with possibilities.

  Two days later, at 5:30 in the morning, somewhere in the Duck Mountains, Leo and Axel hurried through the forest with their knapsacks, compass and map in hand, and came upon two things. One was the dope, all nicely packaged and waiting for them like a grail in an adventure tale. The other was a naked woman picking morels. She looked just peachy in the early morning light. The naked—and unembarrassed—woman eventually became Mrs. Axel Werner. As for the dope, Leo smoked his half and gave the rest away to friends. Axel, ever the greater risk taker, and yet somehow the more canny, sold his half. With it, he made a down payment on the Dauphin Courier, a biweekly Eve’s uncle was putting up for sale, and which Axel, on a whim, decided was just the sort of business to get into. After all, hadn’t he written great essays in college? Leo, having all the skills an arts degree guaranteed in the late 70s (none) and with nothing better to do, went to work for the Courier. What the heck. He’d written great essays, too. How different could journalism be?

  And they all lived happily ever after.

  “Well, not really,” Leo said out loud.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I was just going over something in my mind. Anyway, some? Some of your own money?”

  “I’ve sold one kidney and I’m functioning without a liver.”

  “That’s a trick.”

  “Okay, I remortgaged the house.”

  Leo stared. “Doesn’t the house belong to you and Eve?”

  Axel shrugged. He moved to the file cabinet.

  “Did you also sell your brain somewhere along the line? This is just a magazine.” He picked up a copy from the desk. Volume I, number 6. Sixty-four pages. Full-colour. Glossy stock. Perfect bound. The thing screamed: No Expense Spared. “How did you think you were going to make this work?”

  “We had a plan. We’re not completely stupid.” Axel yanked so hard on the file drawer, the drawer slipped its track and crashed to the floor. “Fuck!”

  “Here, I’ll help—”

  “
Leave it. I don’t want you putting your glass back out. The fucking cabinet’s rented anyway. Throw me that box.” Axel dropped to his knees and began removing files from the drawer. “The plan was to distribute it with the Zit, controlled-circulation style.”

  “Not a bad idea.”

  “And we just about had it in the bag when it was suddenly scotched.”

  “You mean by Harry Mack? Isn’t he of Scottish origin?”

  “I think he left the ‘enzie’ or ‘intosh’ back in Poland. Anyway, this is before Harmac bought the Zit.”

  “Then who scotched it?”

  “That asshole Guy Clark.”

  “But it’s a business thing.”

  “But editorial had a say. And Clark went out of his fucking way to fuck this deal up.”

  Leo watched Axel slam manila files into the box. Guy always seemed preternaturally jealous of anyone who left the Citizen for better things. “How do you know this anyway?” he asked.

  “I just know,” Axel replied darkly, glaring up at him.

  Leo began folding the top cover for the document box. “So, what are you going to do? I mean, now you’ve got this debt—”

  “I’m going to resurrect this magazine, of course.”

  “How?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “Again I say ‘how?’” Leo tossed him the box cover. “Appeal to the new owner? You’ve still got Clark blocking the way.”

  “Remember our plan to brick up his apartment door one night while he was sleeping?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Let’s do it, and then run a hose from the car exhaust.”

  “He lives on the fifteenth floor, remember?”

  “Shit.”

  Leo picked up the March 1988 issue again. Paul Richter, the WSO conductor, was the cover boy. How many Winnipeg readers, he wondered, really gave a crap about the orchestra’s ups and downs? “Why not just go on and do something else? Forget this.”

  “Because.”

  “You are such a fucking egomaniac, Axel. You just want to rule the world, annex the Sudetenland, invade Poland—”

  “Would you cut out that crap? We’re not kids on Jackson Street anymore.”

  When they were kids on Jackson Street in Riverview and playing War, Leo and Axel invariably got stuck on the Axis side. One of the other boys’ fathers had brought home a Nazi war helmet as a souvenir, and Axel usually found his eight-year-old cranium swimming in it. Axel wasn’t German. He had been adopted by German-Canadians. His parentage was a mystery. Part French? Part Aboriginal? Maybe part Italian, like himself? A little Slav thrown in? All these had crossed his mind at one time or another. Axel had thick, black hair and almost olive skin. His eyes lacked a fold or two, giving him at times the oriental inscrutability of cliché. But for the eyes, the two of them had sometimes been mistaken for brothers in those early years. Leo, meanwhile, was the son of an Italian soldier who had spent most of the war on a prison farm in Devon, where he had met Leo’s mother and scandalized the community by marrying her not long after V-E day.

  “What I mean, Axel, is you just want to control something. You could move to Toronto and work your way up the ranks there, but—no—you’d have to accept something a little lower on the masthead.”

  “Shut up.” Axel rose and yanked at another file drawer.

  “You could have had Guy’s job. You had as good a chance as Liz or Guy to be Go! editor—probably better. You know more about the arts—”

  “Butt-munching was the route to that job.”

  “A little golf, maybe. And Guy knew how to play…and lose. And win, as it happens.”

  “That prick!” Axel looked at him—or stared through him—his eyes glittering strangely. He was clenching and unclenching his fists.

  “No argument there.” Leo backed off a little. He enjoyed riling Axel, but wondered if he’d go too far some day. When they were boys, Leo had once beaten Axel up handily over ownership of a comic book, though Axel was a year older. But in latter years, after he’d sold the Courier and landed in the Zit’s Go! section, Axel had taken to body-building with a vengeance—to prove arts guys aren’t wusses, Leo figured—and it had worked. Leo, who sometimes questioned if Axel didn’t harbour a secret desire for a grudge match after a quarter-century, didn’t want to find out the hard way.

  “Anyway, need another box? Axel?”

  Axel seemed to return from some reverie. He looked with disgust around the room, and grabbed at the ponytail he’d lately affected, and which Leo hated. “Let’s go to Blondie’s for a burger.”

  “Nah. I gotta get back.”

  “Nose to the grindstone.”

  “At least I’ve got a job.”

  “You should take some risks.”

  “I’ve taken risks.”

  “Only because I made you.”

  “Like stealing a car when I was fifteen? Frank regularly brings that one up.”

  “Just try not to reoffend.”

  “Fuck you.” Leo turned to go. Then he remembered his original mission. “So, why did you phone me at 8:31 in the morning?”

  “Oh?—shit—I forget.”

  “Were you here or at home?”

  “At home.”

  “But I’m not often at the Zit at 8:30 in the morning.” Leo frowned. “What’s up? You only ever phone me when you want something.”

  “That’s not true.” Axel squirmed. “I was just wondering—” He yanked at his ponytail and grimaced. “—I was just wondering what you were wearing to the Galleries Portáge opening Saturday.”

  Leo’s eyebrows rose a notch. “I thought I’d wear the pink chiffon. What are you wearing?”

  “Ha ha. I meant, I heard you guys had to rent tuxedos.”

  “That was an ugly rumour. I’m wearing my suit.”

  “Oh, okay. I guess I’ll wear mine, too. If I can get it repaired in time. I’d thought about getting a tux.”

  Leo frowned. “For this you phone me at 8:30 in the morning?”

  “Well, it was on my mind.”

  “Bullshit, it was.”

  “Oh, bugger off back to the Zit. I didn’t ask you to make a special trip here.”

  “I was at the cop shop. It’s four hundred yards from here.” Leo paused. “You heard about Michael Rossiter, I suppose.”

  “Yeah, what a bummer.” Axel turned back to the filing cabinet. “Are you covering it?”

  “Sort of.”

  Leo expected Axel to query his ambiguous reply. Nada. Axel was bent over the third drawer down. Leo addressed the ponytail: “Did you know him very well, I mean when you were covering the arts at the Zit?”

  “Who?”

  “Michael Rossiter, you idiot.”

  “No, not really. Did a piece or two on his photography.”

  “You knew about his philanthropy…”

  “Yeah, but he kept such a low profile that it never turned into a story. I think you know what I mean from personal experience.”

  “So…no insights.”

  “Nope, sorry.”

  “Okay.” Leo turned toward the door. “Well, I guess I’ll see you and Eve on Saturday.”

  Axel grunted. “Well, me, anyway.”

  “Right. Roger Mellish said Eve’s a little behind laying out Taste of Winnipeg.”

  “That stupid book. They haven’t even finished reading the first set of proofs she sent them. Why don’t those Junior League bitches just fuck the poolboy and stop wasting everybody’s time—”

  “Get a grip.”

  “—Anyway, Eve’s gone to Dauphin to stay with her parents for a while.”

  “Oh, oh. Does this mean your cock got out of the barnyard again?”

  “You should talk.”

  “Hey, I’m not married. My cock’s free range. Yours is cooped.”

  “That metaphor sucks.”

  “You’re the arts guy. Besides, I think that’s called an allusion.”

  Axel turned and gave him a slow, evil grin. “Made it with this Stevie
person yet?”

  “None of your business.”

  “What is it? Three months? Is she waiting to be pinned or something? Lavaliered?”

  “She’s had a rough time. A bad divorce and stuff.”

  “That’s not what I hear.”

  Leo was suddenly alert. Axel looked alarmed. It only lasted a second, but it was perturbing. “What do you know? You’ve never even met her. And I haven’t seen you since June.”

  “Hey, kidding.” Leo watched Axel fiddle with a loose handle on a file drawer. “I was just trying to yank your chain, pal.”

  They stared at each other for a moment. Then Axel walked over and pulled the framed first edition cover off the wall. “Anyway,” he said, running his finger over the layer of dust on the top frame, “I’ll see you Saturday. Wear the chiffon.”

  “Ha ha. Fuck you.”

  12

  An Heir

  “Stop the car! Pull over!”

  “What! Why?”

  “I’m going to be sick.”

  Stevie careened through the traffic on Maryland and turned quickly onto St. Matthew’s, grinding a few gears as she did so. She was unused to a stick shift and Merritt’s Miata convertible was so low to the ground and visibility with the top up so poor, she felt like she was driving a kiddie car. She screeched to a halt outside a church; Merritt flung open the door and leaned over. Stevie heard retching sounds, and felt her own gorge rising. She reached around to her bag stuffed in the narrow space behind the front seat and rooted around for some Kleenex.

  “Delayed reaction?” she asked, passing a wad of tissue to Merritt.

  Merritt held her throat with one hand and dabbed at her mouth with the other. “Something like that,” she croaked.

  In fact, to Stevie, Merritt had looked remarkably composed exiting the morgue at the Health Sciences Centre. Whereas Stevie had yearned to be in on the conversation with the priest, she had no desire to share Merritt’s task of identifying Michael’s body. The imprint of last evening’s horror would not soon fade, and to see him laid out on a slab, she was afraid, would send her tumbling to the floor once again. Merritt, however, perhaps a little paler than when she went in, had merely shrugged. “Well, it was him, all right. I don’t know why I had to do that. I mean, you could have—”