Easy to Like

by Edward Riche

  His first, right, foot was immediately joined in the atmosphere by its trailing partner. His left heel catapulted toward the stars. Thrown into a cartwheeling motion, his head was thus thrust downward even as it dropped under its own weight. The skull would have continued in accelerated descent, perhaps all the way to Hades, if not for its colliding with frosty, perfectly firm, terra. The weight of his carcass above felt, for a moment, as though it might bend his neck to breaking, but the load was relieved as his body continued its unstoppable tumble, his arse now foremost.

  Instinct drew him into a ball. While this did the trick of protecting his organs, it also made him tumble faster. He was rolling, bouncing, into a crevasse. That he was plunging into a ravine over which the Rainblatt shack was cantilevered became known to him only in retrospect. His endless falling was so unexpected that Elliot judged, even as he was being pummelled along the way, that he was actually experiencing not a physical event but some cerebral catastrophe, some stroke or embolism that made him feel as though he was falling into a cut in the earth.

  Coming to rest, abruptly, on his back, winded by the unyielding planet, he thought about the barranca at the end of Under the Volcano. He looked up, waaaaaay up. Unlike Lowry’s consul, however, he was alive, and no dog appeared to have been tossed in after him.

  What sort of tithead built on the edge of a ravine? The answer smirked down from the crown of lights a hundred feet up: a Rosedale tithead with more money than sense. He sat up. Nothing broken, but — for as Elliot looked into the gloom he saw a hairy, semi-erect ape clutching a bottle of wine — perhaps head trauma.

  No. No. There was a very real creature not six feet from him. It studied the treasured Isabelle d’Orange for a moment. It looked at Elliot. It pointed its index finger at him like the finger was a pistol. It drew back the hand, as if starting to put the weapon back in a shoulder holster but stopping short. It employed the rigid digit of the gun hand to push the fragile cork easily down the neck. The pressure propelled a gush of scent into the air. Elliot could smell the wine, its celestial violets, only the length of a man away. Cautiously, Elliot stood. The creature put the bottle to his head and chugged. He was thirsty. The cork within the bottle was tossed about by the currents made by the rapid emptying of the contents and the consequent backwash of breath and spittle. It brought to Elliot’s mind the old flow indicators on the sides of gas pumps, the balls dancing around in their transparent dome. The creature downed a third of the liquid in one go, ceasing with a smack. It then held the bottle out to Elliot as an offering, a suspension bridge of saliva from its lips to the bottle’s own mouth. Elliot was tempted but finally shook his head, declining what was surely a hot herpes Slurpee.

  “Who the fuck,” the creature asked, hot breath condensing into billows in the cold air, “are you?” The hairy thing was inadequately dressed in a wollen lumberjack shirt that might once have been red and black. Its trousers were lacquered stiff and shiny with oily grime. The head was shaggy, the mop morphing into natural dreadlocks, face bearded. It wasn’t nearly as tall as Elliot but was considerably more muscular — twice Elliot’s width at the shoulders.

  “My name is Elliot Jonson.”

  “Johnston, hey?” The creature took another pull from the bottle. He held it back so as to scrutinize the label and said, as if reading from it, “What’s your business with that cunt Rainblatt?”

  “I’m a dinner guest.”

  “I pass by every so often, wait for that dizzy motherfucker to come down that bank like you did.”

  “You’ve not thought of calling, leaving him a message?”

  “Out for a smoke, were you?”

  “Yes,” said Elliot, thinking that a cigarette would actually be a plausible, if frowned upon, excuse for his absence. He could say it was pot; people were usually better with that than tobacco. Certainly no one would believe that he had been detained by a sasquatch.

  “Wait . . . Elliot Johnston . . . I know that . . .”

  “There were notices regarding my appointment in the papers. It’s ‘Jonson,’ by the way, J, O, . . .”

  The creature started, going into a slight crouch — whether an offensive or defensive posture, Elliot couldn’t say.

  “YOU!” growled the creature. “You’re the new Heydrich!”

  “I’m the new vice president of English television, yes. But I’m not a ‘new Heydrich,’ I’ve got my own agenda,” Elliot said, thinking again that it was really time he did get some sort of agenda. “And you are?”

  “Benny Malka. I’m an entertainer.”

  Malka . . . Yes, Elliot recalled reading about him in the paper on his ill-fated flight from LAX to Paris. Show cancelled, rumoured to be living as a wild man in the ravines . . .

  “I’ve heard of you,” said Elliot.

  “Seen my act?”

  “No. I’ve lived in California for many years. You wouldn’t have a reel, would you?”

  This angered Malka, who lunged at Elliot. They were less than a foot apart.

  “I don’t keep one with me in the goddamn ravine! The raccoons could give a shit.” Malka smelled like Spadina on garbage day. “There should be tape at the Corpse. But if it turns out they’ve been bulk-erased, you could try my agent.” He took another deep pull of wine. “I don’t know whether it’s because I’ve been drinking the dregs from blue boxes but . . . this wine, it’s . . .” Malka could not find the words.

  “I should be returning to the party. I promise I’ll look at your tape,” said Elliot, with no intention of ever doing so.

  “You wanna hear my pitch right now?” said Malka. “Talk-show format but —”

  Elliot turned to the steep incline, beginning his climb back up to Rainblatt’s. “I would love to but . . . I don’t want to be rude to my host. Look, why don’t you send me a one-sheet,” he said.

  “I just might do that, Johnston.” Elliot heard Malka finish the bottle and toss the empty into the bushes. “I warn you, no one has ever left the CBC on good terms. I’ll keep a spot warm for you.”

  There was distance between them now, so Elliot thought it safe to call out, “Have you considered radio?”

  “Been there, fuck that,” shouted Malka.

  The soup bowls had been swept away and a course of fish, skinless and white, was being set in place as Elliot returned. Hazel was putting her hand over her wineglass, declining a Saint-Aubin. She caught Elliot’s eye and with a most discreet flick of her chin indicated that he should look down at his jacket. There was a terrific tear in the left panel, no doubt sustained in his fall down the ravine. He took the jacket off and folded it to conceal the rip. Hazel managed to grin at him quizzically in such a way that only he was aware of it. Willed light in her eyes implored him to be careful. Yet the corners of her mouth twitched, betraying delight that he was up to some secret mischief.

  “. . . isn’t that so, Elliot?” she said, once he was seated. “Programming next season right now.” Her phasing suggested he’d been there all along. She knew her social witchcraft.

  “Thinking about it constantly,” Elliot said.

  “It would be impossible,” said Marshall to his fish, “to do worse than your predecessor.” He looked up at Elliot. There was suspicion in his gaze. He, perhaps alone, had noted Elliot’s lengthy absence. “Unless one tried to.”

  Some of the dinner party took their coffee in the living room while others stayed at the table. It was relaxed. Elliot had finally cooled down from his ravine adventure. During the main course he could feel his shirt wet against his back. Only Hazel and Marshall seemed to suspect he’d been up to something and so, to avoid the latter, Elliot took a seat on a couch next to Patrick Cahill. Alas, now, when Elliot would rather the matter forgotten, Cahill deigned to answer Elliot’s earlier questions about the wines.

  “So Victor told you that my order have a presence near Avignon.”

  “A monastery?”

  “Yes, though I am not a monk myself.”

  “Get out more, do you?�
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  “We also maintain a cottage, formerly a hermitage, near Uzès. Do you know the town?”

  “Know it well,” said Elliot. “Lovely spot.”

  “There is a caviste there. He recommends the wines to me. I am not a man of means. Our order still has several hectares under vine. We make some sacramental wine; otherwise, the grapes go to various winemakers. I don’t know the details. We get so much of this and that in compensation. There is some bartering.”

  “Your caviste is knowledgeable.” Elliot knew he should drop it but could not resist. He saw from whence the Isabelle d’Orange came. “I noticed some obscure —”

  “Like?” Cahill said, too quickly.

  Elliot was going down a dangerous road. He veered. “What does one look for in a good sacramental wine?”

  “Smooth transubstantiation.” There was nothing in Cahill’s tone to tell Elliot whether or not he was joking. The Farinist nutters back in Paso were big on transubstantiation, believed the dough they donned could turn, like the host, into the flesh of Christ, and so protected them like godly armour.

  “Your order, your religious order . . . ?”

  “The Clementines.”

  “I’ve not heard of them. Mostly found in France, in the South? Or the Maghreb?” Elliot said, thinking of the source of much of the tiny citrus.

  “We’ve a centre, for study, here in Canada. In Niagara. We had vineyards there as well, but I’m afraid we had to liquidate them to cover court settlements with . . .” Cahill hesitated.

  “I’m originally from Newfoundland.”

  “So you know.”

  “I understand a St. Pat’s dancer could be hard to resist.”

  “Patent leather shoes, short pants, and a tartan sash. Lucifer himself could have tailored such temptation.”

  “I’ve been meaning to drive down to Niagara, see some of the wine country here. I myself —”

  “We’re having a retreat in three weeks’ time,” said Cahill.

  “I couldn’t.”

  “No?”

  “Well . . . ‘wouldn’t’ is probably truer.”

  “Do you not have faith?”

  “Faith? No.”

  “I should have thought that would be a qualification for your position. It was in the past. I have personally given counsel to many senior CBC executives. I was for a time a consultant for religious programming.”

  “The slack has been picked up by cable.”

  “No, sir. Cable is not to blame.”

  “I thought cable was always to blame.”

  “The cause is adoration of the devil, and the consequent decline of the West.”

  “Oh.”

  “Granted,” Cahill said, expelling a breath, “the fractionalization of viewership has some role.”

  “That’s all I was saying.”

  “It’s not like having some spiritual programming on Sunday mornings is going to bump a hot new show.” Cahill’s tone had changed completely: he was now another petitioner. “We’d only be displacing shows about gardening and house renovation.”

  “The new, secular religions?”

  “I think you will find that Canadians are becoming more pious, not less.”

  “You’re a Catholic, so you would be inclined to —”

  “I’m no Roman!”

  “Oh . . . I am so sorry, I thought . . .”

  “I belong to the true Catholic Church, not that of the Roman antipopes.”

  “I don’t follow.” Elliot was genuinely lost.

  “We do not recognize the papacy that returned to Rome from Avignon. We remain faithful to the church of Clement VII and the popes of that line.”

  Elliot smiled and nodded, trying to show that he took all this as interesting but not terribly significant. Cahill, though, was staring at him with undisguised menace, as though now, having revealed a dangerous secret to Elliot, he might need to ensure his silence.

  Elliot related his conversation with Cahill to Hazel as he drove her home.

  “So nothing to do with fruits at all,” he said. “Clementines after Clement VII.”

  “He is a most disturbing man. You said as many words to him tonight as I have in my entire life,” she said.

  “I’ve spent years looking for this lost grape variety, Matou de Gethsemane, and I think there is a chance that Cahill’s order of monks cultivates it. I might have been looking on the wrong side of the Rhône River.”

  “How nerdilicious. What’s so special about this . . . Matou de . . . ?”

  “It’s thought to add elements that are . . . cranky, in a good way; it lightens wine that can be too heavy, works against the sense of sweetness that high-alcohol examples can have. It’s a difficult grape and brings all the wrong things, but it gives the whole picture a kind of asymmetry that makes it more interesting.”

  “Where the hell did you go?”

  “The Vaucluse, mostly, between Avignon and Orange, but —”

  “No, I meant during dinner. You disappeared.”

  “I stepped out back for some air.”

  “I told Victor you’d snuck out for a cigarette. He does all the time. Or did, before his inner-ear thing.” Hazel said, looking out the window at the city. “I could go for a smoke about now.”

  Elliot wished he had one to offer.

  They arrived at Hazel’s immodest digs. One of two swinging gates opened, suggesting that Hazel had pressed some remote control device in her clutch. Elliot was curious about the house and Hazel’s domestic arrangements and hoped she would invite him in. But she was half out of the car before she said “Thank you, Elliot.”

  “You are welcome, Hazel.”

  Hazel was standing on the pavement. She bent down so she could look within Elliot’s car.

  “What happened to your jacket?” she asked.

  “I slipped on the grass when I went outside.” Elliot gave her the answer he had prepared.

  “See you at the office, boss,” Hazel said and closed the door.

  Five

  AFTER A THIRD ATTEMPT to call Soledad failed he tried Lucy. It was early morning in Los Angeles and her not answering suggested she and Ascension were travelling. Hazel could not be raised at any of her phone numbers and did not respond to his text.

  He went to an afternoon screening of The Centuri Protocol. Sure enough, Elliot was credited as a producer. He was in for points. Given box office reports, this was going to be a significant chunk of change.

  It wasn’t a drama in the old sense, with story and character; it was rather a purely visceral entertainment experience. It played not on the eyes and the ears and the mind but rather the kidneys. It was a new kind of loud for Elliot. He supposed maybe that was what it was like to be inside an explosion, or to be incinerated. The actress Virginia Whalen, who also had a turn in Elliot’s The Nevada Girl, was raped, noisily, by an angry metaloreptilian alien.

  Elliot left before the end and walked to Lai Wah Heen Chinese Restaurant for Christmas dinner.

  Six

  THE BUREACRACY of the institution was virulent. Elliot’s desk, which he’d once feared was suspiciously empty, was now so cluttered as to be impossible to navigate. The credenza at his back was a dumping ground. Both were off limits to Stella, as Elliot claimed, falsely, that there was order in the teetering stacks.

  Sorting the potentially worthy proposals and show pitches from the piles would have taken him days. Instead he called for fresh copies of those he could remember and took them home. Too many distractions at the office to give them the attention they deserved, he said. He knew that somewhere in his office were another half dozen or so worthy projects of which he could not remember the working title and which, therefore, would not move forward. This seemed arbitrary, but Elliot reassured himself with the thought that if the titles or concepts weren’t catchy enough to have lodged themselves in his head, they probably wouldn’t do so in the ever-shortening attention span of the viewing public.

  Consideration of the population’s generali
zed ADD helped him recall the audience profile Hazel had worked up at his request, the “everybody” he was going to make the CBC serve “every way.” He was able to find this fat document amidst the mess because she’d enclosed it in a memorable shiny red binder.

  Once home, with a second glass of decent Bourgeuil, Hazel’s survey was the first thing he reached for.

  Canadians, he saw, liked to think they were more liberal and more cosmopolitan than they were. Their tastes in all things, from coffee (they liked it weak and milky and sweet; the double-double was their brew) to potatoes (they liked them in a variety of plain preparations, and often) were described, kindly, as simple; less generously, as pedestrian. Elliot flipped through the pages. Easily embarrassed, they couldn’t stand to see even a nipple on display. Though they went to church less and less often, more of them than seemed sensible remained “believers.” Cahill had this right. The exception was the burgeoning evangelical population, who, if their numbers continued to grow as they had, would soon be a powerful minority. These people worshipped a lot, and hard.

  He paged ahead to “Economics.” Contrary to what the citizenry imagined, the gap between the wealthiest members and the less fortunate was widening. And in numbers, the poor and destitute were large for an industrialized society. The treatment of the Native population was a horror show, an apartheid system where the townships were so remote they could forever be ignored.

  Backwards a dozen pages to “Health and Welfare”: Canadians were overweight, but not in the gross manner of their southern cousins. A quarter of adults were depressed enough to seek treatment, usually in the form of medication.

  “Demographics”: once of English, Irish, Scottish, and French extraction, they were more and more of Asian stock.

  “Education”: Most of them couldn’t read and comprehend a newspaper.

  “Self-Image”: They felt a connection to the land, to the wilderness, but few of them ever went. They were small-town people living in cities.