Dion stared at him, not sure he was serious.
Jon said, “I told Jamie, relax, even if our Cal is working undercover, he won’t find any dirt on us. We’re much too smart for that.” He laughed at his own joke — if a joke was what it was.
Dion remained stunned. At the accusation, at the joke, and at the news that Jamie, the whole point of this expedition, wasn’t going out on the water. “Then I won’t go,” he said. “Tell her that. She can go, I’ll stay, no problem.”
Jon fluttered the notion away with his fingers. “You’re going boating. It actually took a lot of convincing to get her to agree to join us to start with. She’s not keen about the water, either.”
They arrived at the house in Deep Cove. Dion parked, carefully, without incident, his heart still beating hard from the undercover allegation. Jon hopped out, saying, “Come on in. Mel’s just putting a few things in the cooler.”
Dion followed him inside and glared at Melanie, who was preparing food in the open-concept kitchen. Even if she didn’t think he was a spy, it might have been awkward, meeting like this, considering the last time he had spoken to her, she was under investigation, and he was the one investigating her. Or at least taking notes. She waved hello with a smile. She didn’t seem bothered by his presence. Jamie was nowhere to be seen, but it hardly mattered, since he was on her blacklist.
In the living room, he sat on the sofa and looked around, wondering if they were right, the three of them. Why was he here? Was he checking out Jon York, trying to resolve some vague doubts? Or did he have it all flipped around, and Jon was checking him out? Or both, or something else altogether?
The place was much as he remembered, but tinted now by his new, permanently off-duty status. The colour scheme was pale and earthy, muted but picked up with gold, softened with plant arrangements. A mantelpiece was lined with artefacts; centrally placed was an old-fashioned clock with a dark, wooden body and an audible tick-tock, and on either side of it were framed photographs.
He stared at the photographs for a moment before getting up to study them.
Most of the photographs were of Jon and Melanie. A group of children, maybe the class Melanie had once taught. Hadn’t she said she was a teacher? Photos of an older couple — relatives, he assumed. Photos of what he thought were Jon as a child and Melanie as a child. Photos of the Diamonds staff on opening night. It had been a big group. And finally one shot of Oscar Roth giving Jamie Paquette a bear hug.
This photograph Dion studied closely, surprised by the changes Jamie had gone through in a relatively short time. Her face was thinner in the photo, her hair longer, straighter, and darker. Her makeup seemed less elaborate, too. Oscar had met her only a year ago, so it had been a swift transformation. He recalled Paquette’s talent agent saying she was fatter. If Jamie Paquette was fat now, she must have been a beanpole then.
She looked happy in the photo, being squeezed silly by her new boyfriend. The Jamie he knew didn’t seem happy or carefree. But then he had only seen her across the interrogation table, and her boyfriend had just been violently dispatched. He turned and saw, through doorways and obstructions, something he probably wasn’t meant to see, a moment of husband-and-wife playfulness, Jon hugging Melanie from behind, nibbling her ear. She laughed and pushed him away.
Minutes later, Jon collected Dion from where he stood by the mantelpiece, ushering him out the door, not to the sporty car in the driveway, but the roomier SUV in the garage, and not to the driver’s seat, but the back. Melanie sat in the front, passenger’s side, texting somebody about something. Dion sat and fastened his seat belt. Jon forgot something in the house and had to run back in, leaving Dion and Melanie to make small talk.
“Well,” she said, turned around so they were somewhat face-to-face. “I hear you quit the force.”
Maybe she was smirking, or maybe it was just the light. “I did,” he told her explicitly.
“Big decision.” She faced around front, and the conversation was over. Jon jumped in behind the driver’s wheel, apologizing for the delay, and they were off to the docks in West Vancouver.
The boat that Jon had described yesterday as a “tub,” Dion soon discovered, was a showy speedboat, a length of fibreglass muscle bobbing at the wharf. He followed Jon aboard, then grabbed coolers and gear bags from Melanie below. Finally he gave her a hand up, and she smiled her thanks, though she didn’t seem to need help climbing aboard any more than he did.
* * *
He had to make this day out into a good thing, he decided, as the boat ploughed slowly out of the harbour. Therapeutic. It would force him to confront his uneasy feelings about the ocean. Where those feelings came from, he couldn’t fathom. He had grown up on these shores, had always taken the Pacific for granted. It was just there, part of life. But since his return from the north, it had taken on a sinister persona, like an old friend he had fallen out with, someone he’d rather avoid.
As they entered open water his depression intensified. He sat in the seat next to Jon York and didn’t look ahead, or behind, or over the side, but kept his eyes fixed on whoever was speaking, Jon or Melanie. He held tight to the seat railings as the jet boat picked up speed and bucked and slammed across the heavy green water. Only when one of the Yorks pointed at something would he dutifully stare out across the waves, at Siwash Rock, or some famous luxury cruise ship, or any other point of interest they thought he would appreciate. The motion was tougher to ignore, and he began to feel ill. Pukey ill. He shouted at Jon to please slow down.
Jon slowed down. They were cruising along gently now, passing the slower yachts, gaining on the Queen of Whatever surging her way across the straits toward the Island. Tour time, Jon said, and looped the boat back toward the calmer shore, giving Dion a bit of a reprieve. Jon chugged the boat past the homes of the wealthy, around an arbutus bluff, until a rocky point came into view, jutting out and taking the waves like the prow of a ship. Here he idled the engine and pointed up to a house under construction. That was his dream home on Sea Lane, peeking over boulders and wild grasses, its windows reflecting the horizon like melancholy eyes.
“Wow,” Dion said. “Gorgeous.”
“I would moor and show you around, but we don’t have a lot of time,” Jon said, and steered back out to the open. “I’m going to speed her up.” He grinned. “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”
He sped up. Dion remained miserable, but no longer felt about to throw up.
Melanie, who had sat between them for the first while, moved to the back — the stern. She wore a bathing suit and some kind of wrap. Jon, at the controls, wore swimming trunks and a fluttering Rayon shirt with a palm tree motif. Dion felt overdressed in cargo shorts and T-shirt, with an added long-sleeved denim shirt over top, to protect himself from the spray. Like the Yorks, he wore dark sunglasses.
Jon gestured out at the waves. “Oz loved the water. Loved the rush. But he wasn’t smart about it. Hit a deadhead last summer, doing upwards of eighty knots in his little Stingray, but lucky bastard was skipping like a stone, just clipped it and bounced right over. Still totalled the boat, got a big hole ripped in the hull, had to hightail it for home before it sank. If he’d hit that thing head-on, he’d be crab meat.”
Dion said, “Eighty knots, what’s that in KPH?”
“It’s fast,” Jon said. “Especially in the chop he was pushing. You need glass for that kind of speed. Flat water. Couldn’t do it in these conditions, say, bit of rock and roll. In fact, I wouldn’t do it in the best conditions. Value my neck too much. Must be getting old, but these days I’m more of a cruise-along type, pop a beer and throw out the line.”
“Is that why Jamie doesn’t like boating, ’cause of the crash?”
Jon shrugged. “Unlikely. She wasn’t out there with him that day. But he told us all about it that night, when they came over for dinner. And he’s a good storyteller. Scared her, possibly, and she decid
ed boating definitely isn’t her thing. Truth is, she finds it a bore.”
Jon went on to talk about boats, which led to the sport of fishing, which led to sports in general, which Dion knew was inevitable in a way because Jon was athletic. Dion was not athletic, mentally or physically. It was a temporary setback, he told himself. He would get back on top of it again soon, get active, get interested, as he once had been. Be avid about who won the Stanley Cup, as he had once been. Or FIFA. But for now, the sports world was like a stranger’s wedding, some big event happening down the hall, nothing to do with him. He braced himself for the questions, and they came at him now, a pop quiz he was bound to fail.
Are you a hockey guy? Follow any of the big games? What about soccer? No? Football?
Dion told Jon the truth: he had once cared, had jumped around like every other sports fan when a goal was scored. But just didn’t have time, lately.
York asked what games he had played.
“Floor hockey, as a kid. Then the RCMP beer leagues, whatever was up. Some soccer, but mostly baseball. I played baseball quite a bit.”
Jon took the lead and tried to run with it, to turn the conversation that direction, but Dion had little to add. To him, baseball had been easy fun, when Looch was alive. He had stood where he was told to stand and did his best to catch the ball, or swing and hit it, if he was up to bat, and if he hit it he’d run fast as he could. Skidded into base or missed it. In the end, who won or lost didn’t matter to him, so long as there was a party afterward.
He explained all this to Jon. Jon said he understood but sounded wistful. “Not into racquetball, by any chance? Oz and I had a weekly game.” He had steered the boat into a long, slow curve toward a small island, a dot in the distance. “He was bad,” he added. “I won every time, even when I tried to lose, but it never stopped him trying.”
“I haven’t played racquetball,” Dion said, another fail. It didn’t matter. The relationship was some kind of false construct anyhow. He had been brought out here as a joke. Even if he wasn’t a joke, Jon was from a higher plane of life, they were spectacularly mismatched, and this outing was going to be their last, he was sure of it.
The salty wind and harsh sun began to rasp at Dion’s face, and his mouth felt chapped. He pretended to relax back and watch the ocean, but closed his eyes instead. He had a plan: get through this nightmare, then civilly part ways.
“So what d’you do for exercise?” Jon asked, still at it. “Work out?”
“Not a whole lot these days.”
“Run marathons?” Jon asked. “Wrestle crocodiles? Climb rock faces without a rope?”
Dion didn’t bother answering, because the questions were no longer questions, but rhetorical insults.
“Xbox? Chess?” Jon said. “Collect stamps?”
Dion’s patience snapped. “My job was all I needed for fun,” he said. “Now I’m not working, so I’ll probably take up rock climbing without a rope. And Xbox, and racquetball. It’s just a matter of learning how. Piece of cake.”
“Great. I’ll teach you.”
“What?”
“Racquetball.”
Dion stood, grabbing onto the seat back for stability as the boat swayed. “Think I’ll have that beer you offered. Want one?”
“Nope, H2O’s fine.” Jon raised his water bottle.
In the back of the boat, Melanie York sat, apparently meditating on the view, legs stretched out, ankles crossed. Dion pulled a beer from the cooler, and she pointed at the padded bench next to her. He sat and twisted the cap off. The beer he chugged was cold, bitter, and refreshing.
“You don’t look like you’re having a great time,” Melanie called out over the ruckus of the wind. Just as in Diamonds, this boat in motion was a noisy place to talk. “But don’t worry about it. Hedonism doesn’t come naturally to everyone. You gotta give it time.”
“No, I’m just boring the hell out of Jon. My life is about this big compared to his.” He showed a small space between finger and thumb.
Behind her dark glasses, Melanie smiled. “I doubt it. You’re good for him, someone real to talk to. All his friends are businessmen and snobs. You’re more down-to-earth, like Oz. Who he misses fiercely.”
“I’m not real,” he said stiffly. “I’m just an undercover cop. Remember?”
She laughed. Her laughter made him feel foolish, but her words made him feel better. He was oversensitive and too serious, and it was time to lighten up. He said, “I’m sorry I scared Jamie off. You probably wish she’d come along, so you’d have someone to talk to.”
“I’m talking to you,” she said, and added, “No, stay a while,” as he made to leave.
The boat picked up speed, began to batter the water again as it came out of a curve. It seemed to Dion they were going to crash into that little island, a little island that wasn’t a dot any more. Uninhabited, nothing there but trees and rock and surf.
“I’m wondering,” Melanie called, drawing his attention away from approaching catastrophe. He moved closer so she wouldn’t have to shout. “If what you say is true, then you just left an incredible career. Why? Jon says you’re very mysterious about it, but since you are going to tell me everything sooner or later, might as well be now, right?”
Her words added to the slow-building shock of the day. He tried to study her expression, but her eyes were hidden. He said, “How d’you figure I’ll tell you everything sooner or later?”
She removed her sunglasses. “Because I’m honestly curious, and you’re dying to unload. You’re savvy enough to know I’m trustworthy. We’re love at first sight. Do me a big favour and take ’em off.”
Not his clothes, he realized, but his shades. She was wheeling and dealing. He took off the sunglasses and stuck them in his shirt pocket.
“Lost somebody, didn’t you?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, to his own surprise. He had meant to say no, because it was nobody’s business, especially hers, what he had lost.
“Good friend?” she prompted. “On the job?”
Just like the yes, he went on without hesitation to tell her. “We got smoked by a car coming off a side road. The guy must have been doing one-sixty. My friend Looch, we worked together for years, he was in the passenger seat. He was killed on impact. I survived.”
Melanie nodded, waiting for more.
“I got a little dazed,” Dion said. “Wasn’t sure I could keep the job, but scraped through. I’m not myself, probably never will be, but I think whatever’s wrong with me doesn’t register on their machines. It’s deeper than that. I figured it was time to leave.”
Melanie’s reaction, as he replayed it later, was perfect. She moved over till she was right next to him, put an arm around his shoulder in a firm embrace, with none of the subliminal menace of Jon’s yoking arm last night. This body contact was different. It was like they were soul mates, and he leaned into it, giving back, his right arm around her waist because it had nowhere else to go, and how could he not be aroused, breathing in her lotions and sweat, after losing Kate, and his job, and all self-respect, to be drawn so close like this?
He pulled away, catching Jon looking back toward them, just a glance. Jon didn’t seem upset. Melanie didn’t either. She sidled back to her end of the bench, reaching into the cooler, and for the first time he took in exactly what she was wearing, the white one-piece bathing suit with chrome accents, pale-blue sarong splitting at the side to show her two-toned thigh, the imperfect tan lines left over from shorts. Her gold-brown hair was tangled with the wind and dampened into tendrils against her throat and temples. Her eyes when she returned his stare were clear and confident. “Well, my dear,” she said. “This calls for something a little more serious than beer. I’m going to make you the perfect Harvey Wallbanger. Bet you didn’t expect a full-service bar on board, did you?”
She shouted at Jon, “I’m keeping yo
ur guest for a while.”
“Have him, he’s a total dud,” Jon shouted back.
His words were a one-two punch but just a tease, a signal that all was okay.
Breathing became easier for Dion, and the sun less harsh as clouds smeared in from the west.
Melanie mixed vodka and OJ, adding a dash from a long, tall bottle of lemon-yellow liqueur that she told him was the secret ingredient, Galliano. Dion’s drink came to him in a tall plastic tumbler instead of a highball glass — to avoid spillage, she said — no garnish.
The drink was nice, citrusy, more refreshing than the beer. He gave Melanie the okay sign, and she blew him a kiss.
Jon called out that it was time to make tracks, and the boat picked up speed again, nosing high into the chop. With vodka and OJ like cold fire in his system, Dion could hear and feel the rising RPMs, and could taste the flapping wind, briny and sweet. The sun found a gap in the clouds and beat down, and he stripped off his long-sleeved shirt, letting the solar energy and spray hit him, hot and cold, the water dashing against his bare arms as intoxicating as the Wallbanger. “Next time bring swimming gear,” Melanie told him, shouting again because they were skimming now, just gunning around that little island like they were lassoing it for keeps. Next time. He stood gripping the railing with his heart beating fast and faced the panorama of ocean without the protection of sunglasses or shirt, and it wasn’t just speed they were wrestling with here, he realized, but dominance, and he was right there in the middle of the fight. In smashing against water and wind, they were killing something, he wasn’t sure what, but it didn’t matter, because he’d been inducted, by Jon’s arm first and then Melanie’s, and as they circled that island at breakneck speed, York on his feet at the controls bellowing like a hooligan and Melanie braced against velocity but laughing hard, when the 150-horsepower roar was sure to drown him out, he let go of some inner straitjacket and shouted into the turbulence his rage and triumph. Somehow the day had shifted violently into beautiful, and he was no longer lost. Definitely, he was back in the swim.
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