by Bill Turpin
“We’re not that kind of journalist,” Max says, torn between politeness and the desire to stretch out on a bed. Even a bed of nails will do.
The Doorman looks shocked.
“What kind of journalist does not write about two-headed sheep?” he asks.
“Prensa Internacional,” the Photog says.
“Foreign correspondents,” the Doorman says quietly. “But there is nothing here for you. You should go home.”
“I’ve been thinking that all day,” Max says.
The Photog and the Doorman talk for a few more minutes in Spanish. Finally, they walk through an open door onto a wooden footbridge that crosses a wide stream and leads to an open door on the other side.
“They are very proud of this,” the Photog says. “When the Palacio was new, guests would catch trout from the bridge and the kitchen would fry them up.”
“And now?”
“He says not to drink from the stream because it is too close to the toilets, which are no longer connected to a sewage pipe.”
“Jesus Christ. We can’t stay here.”
“Well, it seems my information was out of date, yes. But do you really want to start searching the streets for a better place?”
Max does not. Altitude sickness has lodged in the very centre of his skull and is expanding. Every joint aches. He wants to throw up. He wants to go home.
The Photog leads the way across the stream and into a room sporting two cots. They look kid-sized against the high-ceilinged room with its enormous windows, one of which was actually a set of doors opening to a balcony. The filthy ceiling features a filthy plaster bas-relief of some filthy satyr. The window frames are ornately carved. The bathroom door is boarded up and the floorboards are covered in oxblood paint where carpet used to be.
Max sits on the edge of one of the beds and begins to search his knapsack for his toothbrush. “How much are we paying for this?” he asks.
“Thirty-five cents American per night,” is the triumphant reply.
“Jesus help me.”
The Photog is angry. “You were the one who said we had to make every centavo count. I had to make expensive phone calls in a short time to find this place, which has an excellent restaurant. Besides, I do not think there is a Howard Johnsons nearby.”
“Sorry. That wasn’t very helpful of me,” Max says.
The Photog is silent for a moment.
“You have altitude sickness and you are stuck in a strange place. Drink your cola — believe it or not, it will help.”
Max is beginning to feel just a little better when the Photog pulls from his backpack a blade that looks more like a small scimitar than a hunting knife, and jams the point into the floor near the head of his bed.
“What are you doing?”
“There are no locks on the doors, Max. It’s best to keep your knife where you can find it during the night.”
“That’s just asinine,” Max says.
“I am not familiar with that word, but I get the idea. Do what you want, but remember, this is my country. You should do what I do.”
Max recalls how quickly he was felled back on the plaza and reconsiders his position. He opens his puny Swiss Army knife and sullenly sticks it in the floor. The wood is heavily pocked by knife marks of previous guests. Max stares at them and makes the connection with the Bureau Chief’s promise to pay them something because of the “danger”. It makes his head hurt still more.
Max pulls the bedclothes over himself without further ceremony. “If someone breaks in,” he says, “I’m going to let them kill me.”
“That is just la sorroche talking,” the Photog says kindly. “In the morning, you will feel better. We will have fresh trout for breakfast!”
1995
The Campaign:
Drinking with the Fishes
MAX IS WATCHING large goldfish swimming against a
current below his forearms. He is drinking beer, sitting up at a bar that features a clear, four-inch, water-filled pipe that runs its full perimeter and disappears into an aquarium somewhere in the back. The club regulars include journalists and politicians.
In the history of the place, countless arguments have faded away as the drunken belligerents became engrossed in the fishy activity beneath their elbows. The bartender, a shadowy, mischievous fellow, has been known to stir things up by changing the direction of the current without notice. This prompts the fish to change direction. Eventually someone notices, which provokes loud debate about the direction the fish normally swim and why it might have changed if, in fact, it has.
At other times, the morose can look at the fish and contemplate the futility of their lives, which is what Max is doing. For him, it’s a moment of quiet contemplation and self-loathing. For the fish, a circuit around the bar is likely the equivalent of space travel. On balance, a good arrangement for all, Max thinks.
Since the provincial election campaign began Max has been “drinking with the fishes” a little too often and too far into the evening. He is resolving to stop it when a youngish guy in a nice suit takes a seat next to him and stares into the tube.
“Fuck,” the guy says to the fish.
“What?” Max says.
“The fucking campaign. I feel like those fish.”
“Everybody feels like the fish,” Max says.
The bartender evidently hears the conversation and feels the need for downbeat music. Wordlessly, he starts a cassette player and the room fills with the lugubrious lyrics of Ruby Don’t Take Your Love to Town. Kenny Rogers is singing. It seems his lover has painted her lips and curled her hair. The sun’s going down and Kenny’s worried she’s headed to town and takin’ nothin’ but her love with her. Kenny’s on his own. “Roooo-beee . . ..”
Max looks the guy over. It’s the Premier’s executive assistant, his fixer.
“I know you,” he says. “You’re that prick who works for the Premier.”
With some effort, the guy brings his gaze to bear on Max: “You’re that asshole editor. Fuck. I’ll buy you a beer.”
“Sure.”
Their mugs land heavily on the bar without another word being spoken. They clink their beers together, temporarily united in their distaste for political campaigns.
“The only good thing about this campaign is the pussy,” the Fixer says. “It’s everywhere this year. It’s a bumper crop out there.”
“We don’t have that in my business,” Max says.
“I know. You guys wear hair shirts and self-flagellate. Saintly hypocrites.”
Max figures that’s fair ball, but thinks the guy should know why he’s drinking with the fishes tonight.
“Fine. But why can’t you guys just let me do my job?”
“We are letting you do your job. Truth is, for my two cents, we should have you killed,” the Fixer says. “Humanely, of course. We’re not animals.”
“You call what you’re doing to me ‘leaving me alone’?”
The guy orders two more beers. When they thump down before them, he begins his explanation in slow, measured tones.
“There . . . is . . . no . . . conspiracy . . . against . . . you.”
“Really?”
“Swear to God. I mean, according to your editorial page, we’re just a bunch of half-wit buffoons who haven’t even bothered to scrape the cow dung off our boots.”
“Strictly speaking, I said horse manure.”
The Fixer executes an exaggerated bow that would have toppled him from his stool but for Max’s intervention.
“My apologies, your greatness,” the Fixer says upon regaining his seat. “But if that’s your opinion, what makes you think we can organize a conspiracy?”
A large goldfish is stationed between Max’s forearms, calmly working against the current: “See, Max,” it says, “that’s what we’ve been telli
ng you all along.”
Max sighs. “Okay, if not the Premier, then who?”
“Nobody. You have to think of the Party as an independent, living organism.”
“Like a low-grade virus, or foot fungus?”
“Oh, man, you are a fuckhead. On the contrary, it’s a very complex organism. Its members join, participate and die off, like cells in your body, but the Party continues. It even has its own immune system. Right now, it’s having a big immune response to you and your ratbag paper.”
Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town segues into You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Lucille. Kenny Rogers is clearly having a bad night. First Ruby takes off on him, and now Lucille is cruising the bars, leaving him to bring in the crop and feed the four kids by himself. The bartender shakes his head in apparent disbelief at the fecklessness of Kenny’s womenfolk.
“Just ignore him,” says the Fixer, motioning toward the bartender “It’s his way of telling us to go home. Next, he’ll hit a switch on the pump to get the fish swimming in the other direction.”
“Can you prove he does that?”
“No. Many have tried, but none have succeeded.”
Max looks around and sees there is exactly one other customer in the establishment, passed out on his table. He brings the conversation back to the non-conspiracy.
“But somebody has to organize the immune response,” Max says.
“No. That’s the POINT!” The Fixer is strident. “It’s organic, self-organizing. When you get a cold — or maybe chlamydia in your case — do you command your immune system to mount an attack?”
Max’s thoughts turn for a moment to his stomach problems, which the Wife says is stress. But he’s wondering if it’s cancer.
The Fixer drones on with his metaphor.
“No. Your immune system is self-activating. It’s the same with the Party. One member — an immune cell — detects an asshole like you and decides he’s a problem. So he files, in your case, a defamation suit. Now, that’s like a flag for other immune cells, and they just pile on. No one has to tell them to do anything. Same thing happens to Party leaders who fuck up. Even sitting premiers.”
Max can feel his hangover starting already. The Fixer keeps going.
“The Party is saying to you: ‘Stop pissing into our tent; c’mon in and piss out like the rest of us’. Make no mistake, we could use you. You could really make a difference.”
Max looks at the fish. He is sure they were swimming in the opposite direction just a moment ago.
“I hear you,” he sighs, “but why now?”
“Because you’re pissing on the third rail of Nova Scotia politics. Everybody knows you’re trying to get a story on that so-called runway.”
“Jesus, you know how to mix a metaphor,” Max says. “Now I’m pissing into the tent and onto an electrified rail?”
The Fixer offers to buy Max another beer. Max declines. The Fixer orders himself a Martini.
“My point is, the project is in rural Nova Scotia,” the Fixer says. “Nobody cares what your crappy little paper does in Halifax. But the outback, that’s another matter. That’s offside.”
“So you want me to kill the story.”
“You do what ya gotta do. I’m just sayin’.”
The Fixer’s head is unsteady on his shoulders. He squints at Max: “You don’t even know where it is, do you?”
“OK,” Max says, ignoring the jibe. “You didn’t start the immune response, but you can stop it, right?”
“We can, but why?”
Max can tell the guy’s dying to say something else, something juicy. He decides ego is the right bait.
“I guess I’m in over my head,” Max says.
The Fixer nods in agreement: “You don’t know the half of it.”
“What are you talking about?” he asks.
“Always ask yourself who’s got something to gain, Max.”
You pedant, Max thinks. Come on, spill it. You know you can’t help yourself.
“Let’s just say your publisher is a friend of the Party.”
“He’s a friend of whoever’s in power,” Max says.
This earns a smug grin from the Fixer.
“Well, the Party is in power. And therefore your publisher would love to see you on permanent stress leave. Or dead. That wouldn’t break his heart. It’s no big deal, Max. It’s just friends looking after friends. And remember, the Party will look after you, too — if you ask it to.”
1969
The Dancer's Proposition
MAX IS IN bed, his head throbbing like a broken thumb. He is pretty sure there’s someone else’s naked back resting against his own. His love life has been so dismal that his first thought is that there was a big party downstairs and some drunk guy has crawled into his bed. University has been an education that way.
Consequently, there is a mind-bending “Believe it or Not!” moment when he rolls over and sees the Dancer’s fiery red hair spilling across the pillow. Max recovers quickly.
Heart beating madly, he slides down a little and spoons against the warm, dry skin of his new friend. It’s a glorious fit and he feels his appendage beginning to explore what little space remains between their bodies.
“This is nice,” she murmurs. “Let’s stay like this for a while. You would think four times would be enough.”
Max doesn’t know the frequency protocol for one-night stands, but four times does seem sufficient. On the other hand, he doesn’t feel he should be held accountable for one headstrong organ, or be a slave to convention. Nonetheless he repositions. By way of compensation, he starts feeling around carefully with his free hand and finds a soft breast. He cradles it gently and is rewarded with a low “hmmm.”
“Good enough,” he thinks and drifts back to sleep.
Max is awakened by the sound of the Dancer opening his bedroom door and walking into his room naked from her flaming hair to her purple toenail polish. Except for her sunny girl-next-door smile, she is every inch a Vargas drawing from Playboy. Everywhere he looks — and he looks everywhere — Max sees pleasing curves.
“You walked to the bathroom naked?” he asks.
“So it would seem,” she says. “I met one of your roommates.”
“Who?”
“He couldn’t remember his name.”
No wonder. Max is now thinking it doesn’t hurt his image to have this spectacular woman walking between the bathroom and his room without her clothes on.
She picks up on this line of thought: “I think your reputation was enhanced by the encounter. It’s no big deal, you know.”
“Well . . .”
“Well nothing. We’re all the same.”
“I’d say you stand out a bit,” Max says.
She smiles.
“You’re very kind, but my body has a half-life, as I believe you scientists say.”
She holds her breasts. “These babies are already starting to sag and my backside could fall at any moment.”
“Sorry to be argumentative, but all the parts you’ve mentioned seem to be holding up quite well.”
Pleased, she stretches hers arms above her head like a cat in a sunbeam.
“Well,” she says. “I would agree, but modesty forbids . . .”
Max laughs out loud, whereupon she leaps onto the bed and rests her head on his chest.
“After I got into trouble with speed, I finally quit after I met an economist at a private performance who said drugs would quickly destroy my only capital asset.”
“Capital asset?” Max says.
“I believe you’ve become quite familiar with it over the past 12 hours. It’s currently my only source of income and
I have to maintain it long enough to build a normal business before my behind falls, which is what I think will happen first. Worst case, I’ll use the mo
ney to have it hauled back
up.
“That’s why I became part-owner of the club, to build up some other capital. And now, I want you to join my advisory board.”
“Your what?”
“It’s a group of men I’ve met who’ve agreed to help me with business decisions,” she says.
“Why me?”
“Because you have a certain kind of smarts that I’m going to need.”
“I do?”
“Yup. There’s just one thing. If you join my board, we’ll ‘do it’ one more time to celebrate, and that’s it. From then on, it’s all real business and no funny business. You’ve been more fun in the sack than I expected, but rules are rules. And no falling in love. You’re not in love with me, are you?”
“Well,” Max says. “Our age difference is too big for me to fall in love with you.”
Max is surprised to see the Dancer startled by his remark. She hesitates. “Like I said, a certain kind of smarts. You’ve still got some work to do when it comes to women. So, are you in or are you out?”
“What’s in it for me?”
“Non-voting preferred shares.”
Max does not know what those are, but he likes the Dancer a lot and wants to be in her life. Incredibly, lust is going to have to take a back seat. Once again he hears himself saying the unexpected: “Okay. I’m in.”
She speaks directly into his ear, a rapidly-emerging erogenous zone, in a way that makes him regret his decision already: “This is how I’m going to be rich. I know how to spot the right people. I’ll make you rich someday, too, Maxie.”
For lack of anything better to say, Max asks about the name of her business. She rolls off the bed, stands in front of the window and snaps opens the roller blind. The midmorning sun illuminates a magnificent, coppery bush.
The Dancer sees him looking. She pats the general area affectionately: “See? Goldpussy! That’s the business name. Welcome to the Advisory Board!”
Time to celebrate, Max thinks.
1996
Guru Likes Beer, Credit