by Bill Turpin
Max knows that matter-antimatter explosions are the most powerful imaginable, but he’s sure they won’t come close to what’s about to happen.
But, inexplicably, there’s a look of recognition on the Dancer’s face.
“You’re Maxie’s wife?” she says.
“Jesus,” says the Wife. “You’re his friend?”
The Dancer nods yes and the two perform the double cheek-peck.
“You two know each other?” Max asks, feeling oddly disappointed.
The Wife explains that they are “acquaintances”, having met at PR conventions. But, perhaps luckily for Max, they never had a chance to “really sit down and talk.”
“That dress looks fabulous on you,” the Dancer says. “You’ll have to tell me what you’re wearing to future events like this. I don’t think I’m up to the competition.”
The Wife is smiling broadly.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she says, pointedly looking the other woman up and down. “I think you’re holding your own.”
Then she adds: “You don’t look anything like the pictures.”
There’s an awkward silence.
“Oh, you mean the Montreal pictures — the trial,” the Dancer says. “That was Maxie’s idea. He told me not to run from the cameras, but to make sure no one would recognize me after the trial was over. He told me to put on some weight and dress like a madam from the movies. I stayed behind with my lawyer after court and changed into a wig, put on a ton of make-up and put out some cleavage for the media. I thought of bringing a whip, but I wasn’t sure Maxie would approve.”
“You never know,” the Wife says, holding his gaze for a long moment. “Maxie’s full of surprises.”
Har-har-oops, Max thinks.
The Dancer says she got into real estate after the publicity died down. Now she has a holding company with several businesses.
“Real estate? That wasn’t Maxie’s idea, was it?” the Wife asks.
“It was. He said all the house-hungry baby boomers made it a sure thing. He also suggested I change the company name from Goldpussy to Golden Cat.”
They both look at him fondly, although the Wife seems a little perturbed by something. The wait staff are ringing small bells, the first warning that dinner is on the way. The Wife says the Dancer “must come to dinner”, etc., but the answer is a genial “no” disguised as a “maybe”.
“I travel a lot. I have business interests here, but I don’t live here. Not anywhere, really. More important, Maxie is a business advisor.”
“Yes, absolutely.”
“And normally I have a rule about separating business and friendship. I know you understand.”
Max has never understood it. But he nods knowingly.
The Wife laughs. “You’re every bit as smart as Maxie says.”
The Dancer reaches out and touches the Wife’s bare arm.
“I wonder if I could ask something. After this party’s over, could I have Maxie to myself for a couple of drinks? No funny business, of course. I’m too old for it.”
The Dancer fires a look at Max to see if he got the reference before she goes on: “We just haven’t seen each other in a very long time and I’m leaving first thing tomorrow.”
Max does indeed get the reference and winces, but the only thing to do is watch and listen. His fate is out of his hands.
“Well, I’ll need Max around for the post-event back-slapping,” the Wife says. “But then I can take some dessert home and wait in bed for him there. I want something in exchange, though.”
She whispers to the Dancer, who laughs and whispers something back.
“I had no idea,” the Wife says.
She turns to Max: “Don’t worry, we’re not talking about you.”
Yeah right, Max thinks.
“Well, that’s good,” he says. “I was thinking I might need a therapist.”
How can the Wife and the Dancer be getting along, Max wonders. Have they been swept up by the manufactured goodwill of the event? Aren’t these events bullshit in every respect, or is there something wrong with me?
• • •
The awards are over and only stragglers remain. The Wife, as usual, picked the perfect moment to quietly depart. On his way to meet the Dancer, Max encounters a drunk car dealer, a major advertiser in the Paper.
“That’s some fine woman you’ve got there,” the dealer says. “Yep, that’s a woman who actually deserves to be on that pedestal, or podium. Or whaddever.”
“Missed the whole thing,” Max lies, wondering how he can end the conversation civilly.
“Well,” the guy says. “You should have been there. I tell you, that’s one fine piece of female you got there. She’s not this year’s model, if you know what I mean, but she’s got that classic appeal. Stylish and comfortable.”
“Tell you what,” Max says, fishing his keys from his pocket and holding them up. “Here are the keys to my house. Why don’t you try her out? You know, kick her tires, take her for a spin around the bed.”
The major advertiser lurches. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Oh, no, of course not, but fair warning: don’t engage her turbo — I doubt you can handle that much woman.”
As Max walks away, the dealer shouts: “Everyone knows your wife makes twice the money you do, asshole.”
• • •
The Dancer is waiting for him in a piano bar across the street from the hotel. Campari and soda await him on the table. They talk for a while, a bit about their lives, a bit about business, a bit about their odd relationship.
The Dancer confirms Max’s suspicions that her encounters with the Wife were not coincidental: “Her name was on the attendees list and I saw a chance to see what she’s like.”
Max wonders why she has refused to meet him face-to-face over all these years.
“Sometimes a kiss is not just a kiss,” she says.
Max is still puzzling over that remark when she gets to her key message: he is in trouble.
“Nonsense. I’m not in trouble,” says Max with mock casualness. “Let me put things in perspective for you. I find it helps to make a list. Let’s see. I’ve got two libel suits, a human rights complaint, the Archbishop is trying to get my wife fired, and the cops are investigating me for contempt of court. So, you see, I’m not in trouble. Once you organize the issues, you realize there’s really no problem.”
She touches his cheek and looks him in the eye: “You don’t deserve it, Maxie. But you’re not careful about your enemies.”
“It’s the job,” Max says. “If you aren’t making enemies, you aren’t doing it right.”
The Dancer grimaces.
A waiter, seemingly unbidden, plops a Scotch beside Max’s half-finished Campari and withdraws.
“So,” Max says. “I’m paranoid AND people are out to get me?”
She doesn’t laugh. “People here don’t like you, Maxie.”
“What’s not to like? And how would you know?”
“I have a business here. I speak to people, and they tell me what’s on their minds. Your name keeps coming up.”
“My name? That’s crazy. I’m below the radar for those people. Do you know how obscure the Paper is?”
“It’s not obscure in Halifax,” she says. “This is serious. They don’t see you as a force of progress.”
Max sputters out a rapid-fire defence. “Progress? That’s the last thing they want. Why don’t they just have me fired if they’re so powerful?”
“Because someone in Montreal likes you and your enemies don’t have much clout there,” she says. “They’re making progress, though.”
This is bad news. Max has always presumed that fighters of the good fight — e.g. Max himself — would eventually prevail, in one way or another. The Dancer is bringing a different message.
&n
bsp; “You could have told me this by phone,” Max says.
“You wouldn’t listen to me that way,” she says. “The truth is that you need to focus on a graceful exit.”
“No way,” Max says. “The Paper is my life.”
Silence ensues. Max knows what’s coming: she gives him the same crazy-woman stare he got the night they met in Montreal.
“Really, Max? It’s not your family, for example?”
Fuck. Max has imagined many ways this conversation might go, but this isn’t one of them. Worse, he is beginning to think the Dancer has it right. The lawsuits, the human rights complaint, a contempt investigation, the Wife’s job. The most likely conclusion is that he’ll leave the Paper wearing the scarlet “A”, for Asshole. He’ll have to hope the Wife keeps her job and supports the family.
The Dancer digs into her purse and pulls out a jeweller’s box and hands it to Max.
Inside, Max finds two gold cufflinks in the shape of large staples.
“This is your welcome aboard gift from Golden Cat Public Relations,” she says. “Just call when you’re ready.”
She hugs him, hard: “You’re everything I thought you were, Maxie, including your lack of greed. And you’re kind. I’ll always have your back.”
He returns the hug. When finally he looks at her, he sees that she’s worried about him and his heart sinks.
“Don’t worry about me.”
“Why is it inconceivable that someone should worry about you? I decide who I worry about. And I worry because I know what makes you tick. So does your spectacular wife.”
“She’s worried, too?”
The Dancer treats him to another crazy-woman stare.
“Okay,” Max says. “I get it.”
• • •
At home, the Wife is waiting for him, as promised, in bed with a creamy dessert purloined from the banquet.
“Are you worried about me?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. I accept that.”
“Very generous of you.”
“Did you like her?” Max asks.
“She’s classier than I expected. And smarter. She says you’re one of her key advisors,” the Wife says. “Why didn’t you tell me about all the advice you give her?”
“We just talk a few times a year. I’ve told you that,” Max says. “It didn’t seem important. It just seemed like it was a leftover from a previous life.”
“I hope I’m never one of your leftovers,” she says.
“I didn’t mean it like that. She’s my second-favourite woman in the world, but she’s in another . . .”
Max can’t find the right word, so the Wife finishes his sentence for him: “She’s in another compartment, right?”
Max elects not to engage with that idea.
“Is it true you told her to invest in Microsoft?” the Wife asks.
“She was going to put it into Commodore.”
“Why didn’t you invest in Microsoft?”
“I don’t trust the stock market.”
Max changes the topic: “Ever heard of Golden Cat Public Relations?”
“Absolutely,” the Wife says. “They’re shaking things up in the sector.”
Max nods.
“At the awards, what did you whisper to her that made her laugh like that?” he asks.
“I asked her how she keeps her butt from falling.”
“Surgery,” Max says, again thinking back to the long-ago conversation.
“No.”
“Really? What did she say?”
“Can’t tell you. It’s a gender-security issue and you don’t have clearance.”
1995
The Campaign:
Enough!
“DO YOU REMEMBER that car dealership jerk from the awards ceremony?” Max asks the Wife.
“He swings a heavy bat in this town.”
“A car dealer?”
“Car dealers have lots of money, Maxie. That makes them leading citizens.”
“Well, he’s one of your fans. He says you’re stylish and comfortable. He also said I make half the money you do.”
The Wife nods her agreement.
“What part are you agreeing with?” he asks.
“All three,” she says, pecking his cheek and moving on toward his earlobe. “You know what my salary is.”
“The next day he threatened to pull his ads from the paper if I didn’t quit and said I’m holding back your career,” Max says. “The Cobra had to talk him down.”
“So what?”
“I should quit, I guess,” Max says. “I don’t want to hold you back.”
“You’re going to take advice from a car dealer?”
Max gives this a few moments’ thought.
“Have I ever told you,” he says, “that you’re stylish, yet comfortable?”
“I’m glad you feel that way,” she says. “Because His Excellency finally did it — sent an informal note to the university president saying he’s concerned that I may have had an abortion.”
“The sheepfucker,” Max says. “I’ve had enough of this crap.”
“About time.”
1975
Reporter Meets El Mago,
Gets Even Bigger Story
MAX SITS IN the blackest darkness he has ever experienced, trying to estimate how long it has been since his arrest outside the community college. The APC they tossed him into stank of body odour and diesel. The ride was rough; seemingly every pebble jarred his bladder another notch toward urgency. When the APC stopped, Max was blindfolded by sweaty hands and walked to his cell, his feet only occasionally touching the ground. In the short time between the removal of his blindfold and lights out, Max saw that he was in a genuine dungeon, complete with arched roof and chains anchored in a stone wall. His escorts laughed and killed the lights when he asked to pee.
“The Wife is not here,” his own voice says in his head as he relieves himself against a wall. “We’re not even married yet.”
Max’s experience of breathing gains new prominence. Sometimes a breath reassures him that he is alive and will find a way to stay that way. Sometimes he feels like a man underwater breathing through a pipe, not sure how far the intake extends above the surface.
Max notices a hollow feeling just below his sternum that signals irrevocability, like the one he gets when he realizes that he can no longer control his skis and that only luck and the laws of physics will determine whether or not he slams into a tree. This is Max now, waiting to see whether a tree is around the corner.
He hears footsteps and sees a flashlight bouncing on the wall opposite his cell as someone makes his way along the paving stones. The flashlight arrives and turns directly on him. Max is blinded.
“Do you know how to make someone disappear?” says the owner of the flashlight. “One method is to fly them to a remote spot over the ocean, remove their clothing and drop them alive into the water. Alternatively, there is the jungle. In either case, you then burn all of their belongings. And then you make sure you have a reputation for barbarity, so the missing person’s friends don’t come looking for him.”
Silence.
“This isn’t just death I’m talking about,” says the voice. “It’s the end of your existence. In time, no one will know you ever walked the earth.”
The light disappears.
Sometime later, Max has no idea how long, the overhead lights come on and a guard leads him down a low passage. Lighting comes from an electrical conduit running down the centre. There are low cells like Max’s on either side, again with arches of brick. It could be a tourist attraction, he thinks.
The guard leads him up a flight of stairs to an ordinary-looking office door marked “Sala de medicos” — Doctors’ Lounge.
“Is this El Mago’s office?” Max says to the guard.<
br />
The guard is slow to answer, but finally nods.
El Mago is waiting for him behind a steel desk painted a mouldy green that could have been anywhere in Max’s high school. He rises, hand extended, and gives his prisoner a strong handshake. Max, who is beginning to collect himself after his purgatory, figures the sudden contrast is meant to disorient him. It’s working well, but even more confusing is how good-looking the guy is, something Max never admits about other men, even to himself.
El Mago is fortyish, sporting a spectacular head of silver hair set above a pair of expressive black eyebrows. The face is intelligent and open. There are laugh lines starting around alert blue eyes.
Moreover, there is something oddly familiar about the accent.
“Come on in. Have a seat,” he says in a warm, soft-spoken tone that Max thinks might actually be genuine. “I hope you like café con leche.”
Max is not especially fond of it, but decides that a windowless room in a Secret Police building is the wrong place to take a stand.
“Muchas gracias,” Max says.
El Mago nods graciously as he passes Max a large cup brimming with coffee and milk.
“I thought so,” he says. “You are a true traveller, someone who knows that even a couple of words in his host country’s native language can open doors and start friendships.”
“Are you the guy with the flashlight from a few minutes ago?” Max asks.
El Mago chuckles. “Yeah, sorry about that. I realized too late you might find that upsetting.”
Max doubts it was an oversight.
Another friendly chuckle. “Well, try some of that coffee.”
Max does. As usual, it’s too milky, barely hinting at the heavyweight caffeine punch Max yearns for. He looks at the cup’s inscription: “National Press Club, Ottawa, Canada’s Capital.”