The Only Café

by Linden MacIntyre

  “I can see him and my father.”

  “Way, way too likeable.”

  Maybe if Cyril’s father had died the way that normal people die, withering with age or some slow affliction, or struck down by some unanticipated stroke of fate, he’d have had a better understanding of death as a particular event as opposed to the continuation of an absence that he’d long ago accepted as a tolerable condition of his life. Cyril had never seen a corpse, let alone his father’s. Maybe if he’d seen his father’s lifeless body that would probably have done it: the primeval shock of seeing someone who had recently been vigorous, mysterious, productive, now emptied out of thought and memory and possibility—pale and cold as marble.

  There had been no hard evidence. Only words: There’s been an accident on the boat. Your father is missing. We must be prepared for the worst. But for Cyril there could be nothing worse than the gnawing feeling in his gut, the enormous hole in everything after Pierre’s dramatic exit from his son’s life on May 26, 2000. Nothing could be worse than that, the cold dark endless autumn where there should have been a summer.

  And then one afternoon—could it only have been months ago? It felt like years, the final confirmation that his father was deceased. Deceased? You mean dead? Yes. A bone and a bracelet offered as proof.

  That night, after his and Nader’s meeting at the Only Café, he told his mother, “I’ve been talking to this guy Ari.”

  “Ari?”

  “The guy Dad met at this little bar in the east end.”

  “He’s Lebanese?”

  “No. Israeli.”

  “I can’t imagine what there’d be to talk about with him.”

  “I believe he thinks Dad committed suicide. He knows that he was having trouble at work, that he had cancer…”

  “Things I never knew.”

  “And he mentioned something strange, about a marriage problem.”

  “First I’ve heard of it.”

  “It was the one thing that rang false…like he was making it up.”

  “Or maybe mixing your father up with someone else he knows. It’s been five years, after all.”

  “Could be.”

  “Mother of God. If there was one thing solid in his life, it was that marriage, it pains me to say.”

  “Okay, though. Here’s the thing: what was he doing vacationing on the boat with Lois here? What was that all about?”

  “It had something to do with work. At least that’s what Lois told me at the time. He was having trouble at work. And—okay, I don’t want this to get around—she said that he was going to have to take the fall for some big scandal in the company. That the lawyer, Ethan Kennedy, the one we met, was behind it somehow.”

  “Ethan?”

  “You could ask her. And Cyril—I hope you don’t think this is me butting in—I really think you should try harder to be nice to Lois and especially to little Peter.”

  “Let’s have a drink, Ma. What’ll it be?”

  “Let’s go for the stuff underneath the sink.”

  “Lois, it’s me. Cyril.”

  “How are you? How is the car? You’re loving it, I bet.”

  “Yes. It’s transforming my image. I’m a totally different person.”

  “I hope not. I kind of like you the way you are.”

  “I wanted to ask about the lawyer, Ethan.”

  “Ethan Kennedy.”

  “What do you make of him?”

  “He and Pierre were good friends. He’s always been helpful with the legal stuff. I think he knows more than he’s prepared to talk about and he doesn’t want to tell me everything he knows.”

  “My mom says Dad was about to quit or to be fired and that this Ethan was somehow involved.”

  “It was more complicated than that. Let’s just say that Pierre was prepared to sacrifice his job to help the company through a controversy.”

  “What kind of a controversy?”

  “You can look it up yourself. Some people were killed during a strike in Indonesia and Pierre was the person in the hot seat. He did nothing wrong. This was all corporate politics. Okay?”

  “Where did it happen?”

  “I don’t remember all the details. It’s been a while. Google ‘Puncak.’ And ‘New Guinea.’ ”

  “Puncak?”

  “P-U-N-C-A-K. And aren’t you turning into the journalist?”

  “Okay. Let me ask this then. Were you and Dad having…marriage difficulties?”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “From someone who probably doesn’t know what he was talking about.”

  “And who…?”

  “It just seems strange. You’re pregnant in the big hot city. And he’s off on a boat somewhere. I mean, you couldn’t have been too thrilled with that?”

  “He went out there for just a few days. A week, max. Then he was coming home. He was on the phone every few hours. He was over the moon that I was expecting. Does that sound like marriage trouble to you?”

  “Sure doesn’t. I gotta run, I’m at work. Someone’s walking toward my desk. Talk later.”

  Hughes grabbed a chair and wheeled it into Cyril’s cubicle, sat, leaned his elbows on the desk, picked up a sheet of paper, looked at it, dropped it. “You’re well?”

  “What’s up?”

  “Well, you’re about to get a lesson in the reality of institutional journalism.”

  “Which means?”

  “Which means our project is off.”

  “Off?”

  “Killed.”

  “Dead?”

  “Something like that. I have no doubt that we are onto a situation that’s real and important so there’s always the chance that something will break and it’ll be back on the agenda. But for now we’ll have to find something else for you to do.”

  Cyril felt nothing. Perhaps it was shock or, maybe, at some deep level he had expected this.

  “You don’t have to worry. You’re on contract now. There will be other stories.” He stood to leave.

  “Who killed it?”

  Hughes paused. “Savage, under pressure from legal. They don’t kill stories. But they present you with certain realities that leave you hanging out there if anything goes wrong. Not many managers like to be in that position and I don’t blame them. So, we move on.”

  “And Suzanne…?”

  “Think ‘rock’ and ‘hard place.’ If legal is the hard place, Suzanne is the rock. Right about now I expect Savage is wishing he’d picked another line of work.”

  He walked away laughing without humour. Hah. Hah. Hah.

  Cyril called Nader’s cell, let it ring until he heard the voicemail prompt.

  “I guess you heard. Call me.”

  He sat for maybe five minutes, mind stumbling from thought to thought. If it’s a real story and we’re certain that it’s true, why can’t we just tell it? Let the other side try to prove it isn’t true. If Ari is who Suzanne and Nader suspect he is, a spy who is also a provocateur, shouldn’t people know? Shouldn’t the people he works for know about his background, what he’s up to? Who does he work for? What do I do next?

  He opened up his browser, looked up the number for Draycor’s head office, made a note of it. He studied the number for what felt like a long time. A phone number his father would have known by heart because it was the most important telephone number in his life. He dialled.

  “Could I have Ethan Kennedy’s office, please?”

  He listened to the ring, the answer. He asked to speak to Mr. Kennedy.

  “Who’s calling, please?”

  “Tell him Cyril Cormier.”

  Kennedy picked up. “Cyril, yes. I remember, from…our meeting about estate matters. What can I do for you?”

  “I want to explore his request about the…memorial.”

  Silence.

  “You knew him. You think that he was serious about that?”

  “I wouldn’t have an opinion one way or another. The document reflects his wishes at the time.
You can draw your own conclusions.”

  “When you and he prepared the document, did he give you any idea who this person Ari is and what was their connection?”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “I see. Well, that was the reason for my call.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful.”

  “No problem. Oh. One other thing. Lois, his widow, mentioned that Dad was about to leave the company. What can you tell me about that?”

  Silence.

  “That he was about to quit…or that he might be fired,” Cyril said.

  “There was no thought of him being fired. I can tell you that much. Yes, there was one brief conversation about…an amicable separation. It was discussed briefly and for the first time on the day he…on the day before he died.”

  “So he wasn’t going to be fired? And why was he supposed to take the fall for that incident in Indonesia?”

  “Cyril. Look. I’m going to have to cut this short. But I’ll tell you this much. Your dad and I were friends. I don’t think that it’s a secret anymore that there were things happening in his life that had nothing to do with his work. Stressful things that…”

  “Like?”

  “Like his health, for one.”

  “Okay. What else?”

  Silence.

  “What about his early life in Lebanon? Did he talk to you about that?”

  “Cyril, listen. Things happen in a life. We move on, try to forget them and, gradually, they become kind of abstract. But now and then they flare up again. You know what I mean?”

  “I suppose.”

  “I’m not basing this on anything he told me. But I found something on his desk when I was removing files and his personal effects. I kept it because I didn’t see its relevance to either the company or the family. It was just a business card but…”

  “A business card for what?”

  “A law enforcement outfit you probably know about. INSET.”

  “I’ve heard of it.”

  “An Inspector Nicholson. The name rang a bell—it was on the list of people he wanted to attend that memorial, the so-called roast. I’ll fax it to you if you’ll give me a number. It’ll be up to you what you do about it—if anything. And I’ll ask you not to disclose where you got it. Understood?”

  “Yes, thanks.”

  “I understand your need to know things. But it’s been a long time now. Your dad died in a terrible accident. It was a terrible loss. But you have a lot of life in front of you, a future to be concerned about. Sometimes mucking around in the past is not a good idea.”

  “I hear you. But just one more thing: what do you know about the accident?”

  Silence.

  Then Kennedy said, “A propane tank blew up. It happens.”

  “I see.”

  “You never heard that?”

  “Maybe I just blocked it out of my mind.”

  “Be well, Cyril. If there’s ever anything I can do, just let me know. Okay?”

  “Will do.”

  Nader was surprisingly relaxed, leaning on top of the padded privacy barrier beside Cyril’s desk.

  “I guess you haven’t heard,” Cyril said.

  “Heard what?”

  “They killed our story.”

  “Correction. They don’t want us to tell our story. Nobody can kill a story, Cyril. Remember that.”

  “Is there a difference?”

  “A big difference. Unless we find out that our story was never a story in the first place. I’m still on it, whether they want to tell it or not.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Are you with me on this?”

  Cyril stood. “I’m with you.”

  They shook hands.

  “So what’s this handshaking?” Suzanne was standing behind them, hands on hips. “Never mind. Savage’s in fifteen minutes.” She walked back toward her office.

  Of all the people in the room, Cyril, Nader, Hughes, Suzanne and Savage, it was the boss who seemed most ill at ease. “This is never an easy call…”

  “Never mind that,” Suzanne snapped. “Whose call is it? Really.”

  Savage sat up. “My call. Okay?”

  “It’s a chickenshit call, Doc, and you know it.”

  “Mind your fucking manners, Suzanne. Remember who you’re talking…”

  “Let’s cut the hierarchical horseshit, Doc, and talk like the colleagues I thought we were.”

  “Colleagues don’t start conversations by hurling insults.”

  “Okay. I take it back. Honestly. Let’s start all over again. You talk.”

  “Shut the door.”

  She did, then sat on the arm of a chair. She reminded Cyril of a large cat, crouched to pounce.

  “Hughes,” Doc said, “you tell me the story we’d put on TV if your fairy godmother delivered all the goods.”

  Suzanne rolled her eyes. Hughes laughed. “Oh, I don’t think it would take a fairy. It would only require a couple of credible flesh-and-blood sources and maybe a document of some kind.”

  “Just tell the story…”

  “Our government security establishment has turned to a foreign intelligence agency to recruit a specialist to manage the infiltration of the local Muslim community. We have reason to believe that he and his agents are acting as provocateurs, either deliberately or inadvertently doing more harm than good.”

  “So who is this spook?”

  “We think we know but we can’t say yet. I think we can do the story without naming names.”

  “I disagree. But let’s just say it really is this dude you guys say hangs out in a bar not far from a downtown mosque. Correct me if I’m wrong. He’s a Canadian citizen, right? Okay, he worked for IDF intelligence, maybe on the dark side. Maybe the very darkest. But he’s one of us, folks. Probably working for our government. You say he’s an instigator? I say that’s subjective and impossible to prove. At worst it’s paranoid. Even if we had his contract in our hands, so what? Nader, you’re being very quiet.”

  “Only because I see your point.”

  All eyes turned to Nader.

  “Is that it?” Savage said with a laugh.

  “No,” Nader said. “But do you really want my perspective?”

  “Of course.”

  “Okay. There’s a war. Young people everywhere are interested in the drama. Some of them are turned on by the cause. Or a lot of different causes. We call them radicals, Islamists, terrorists. Personally? I call them idiots, most of them. They’re dangerous. Mostly to themselves. Anyone who stirs them up or encourages them is dangerous to all of us.” Nader stood then. “If I can be excused, I have a meeting I can’t miss.”

  “Story-related?” Doc asked.

  “Maybe. If there is a story, right?”

  At the door, Nader said: “For the record, I believe our angle is a story, whether we tell it or not.”

  “Wait,” Doc said. “What is your angle, in a nutshell.”

  “My angle? Certain people are exploiting the idiots to win public support for an extremist political agenda here at home.”

  Doc flushed, and his voice was tight: “That isn’t a fucking story. It’s a theory.”

  Nader smiled. “Like evolution? Like global warming? Like relativity?” He left.

  Doc spread his hands wide and sighed in resignation: “See folks? There’s my problem.”

  33.

  Nader is sweet, smart and funny—that’s how Megan Spencer saw him anyway. Cyril agreed with her but could tell that she had deeper, more complex feelings for his friend. They were in the little Dark Horse coffee bar on John Street ostensibly to talk about the challenges of interning at a major media employer. She’d been accepted by the Star. She wanted pointers, practical advice. But from the outset it was clear her mind was really on Nader.

  “He’s quite the enigma,” she said smiling.

  “He is indeed,” Cyril said. “So when do you start?”

  “On Monday.”

  They’d nursed an A
mericano each as Cyril tried to tell her what he’d learned in his brief internship phase: pay attention to everything; consider everyone to be important until each person you encounter demonstrates that he or she is not; don’t worry about sounding green or even stupid—they expect that anyway; arrive early, stay late; above all, take every bit of praise or kindness with a grain of salt because it’s usually delivered to make the futility of internship more palatable; expect nothing more than a free drink or a farewell lunch at the end. Hope for a glowing letter of referral. Try not to pass out if you get an offer of employment, act like you expected it, deserve it, earned it. Be alert, friendly. Admire, but don’t suck up.

  “Nader says you had a job in a matter of weeks.”

  “Pure luck. I arrived as they were launching a special project and I was interested, and I seemed to be—and they were totally out to lunch on this—informed about the story, maybe even connected somehow. Anyway, they took me on for what I consider to be a six-month trial. Probation, if you like.”

  “The story—young jihadists?”

  “Sort of.”

  “But you mentioned a connection to it?”

  He laughed. “I’m in the right demographic. Young, male and Arab…”

  “You?” She was leaning back now, eyes wide.

  “My dad was Lebanese, came here as a refugee in the eighties. Cormier wasn’t his birth name. He changed it legally. Long story. I’m still trying to figure it out. My dad didn’t talk much—to me, anyway. In any case I was genuinely interested in the subject and they could tell.”

  “Wow.”

  “Well. Interesting, maybe. But a long way from ‘wow.’ How’s the coffee?”

  “I’m okay…”

  “I’m going to get another one.”

  “Oh all right. Me too.”

  “So,” Megan said when he came back. “I’d say the luck was having Nader on your side. Right?”

  “Hmm. I wouldn’t say he was on my side.”

  “He thinks very highly of you.”

  “If you say so.”

  Soon she disclosed that she and Nader had been seeing one another since Leo’s party. Just as friends. Coffee. A drink (“He’s the only person I know who doesn’t seem to need alcohol”), they’d been to a couple of movies. “Have you seen Waltz with Bashir?”