Flush

by Sky Curtis

  “Actually Robin, I was just about to call you. I got your messages, and I am sorry that I didn’t return them. I’ve been away on a silent retreat and didn’t take my phone or computer. I just got back and now here you are! I’ve had a cancellation and I could see you in about ten minutes, if you have some free time. Otherwise it would have to be early next week.”

  Ten minutes? Next week was way better because tonight I was meant to be having pizza and wine with Cindy and my friend Diane Chu. But on the other hand, things were pretty bad with my mind, so, today would be better. Was I ready for this? It was such a big step. I loved my wine. Did I have to stop today? Maybe I wouldn’t have to stop, wouldn’t be able, and I could keep drinking. But I would tell people that I’d stopped. No, that wasn’t the way to get it done. I had to be brutally honest.

  I looked at my watch. I had time. The appointment could bleed into my lunch hour. “Sure, I’ll be right there. See you shortly.”

  I waited impatiently in the naturopath’s very beige waiting area for her to stick her nose out of her office and announce my name. I flipped through some magazines on eastern this and herbal that, pausing at a page for a second to look at a lotus flower floating on water. I loved it, but did that make me schmaltzy? It was such a common image. Then I started flipping through the pages again. The dangers of vaccinations. GMO foods. Sleeping aids. Organic clothing. So much work to be pure.

  Finally the door opened and a woman walked out, sniffling and sneezing, wet with bacteria. I made a note not to touch anything as I heard Sally spraying some sort of aerosol in her office. Finally she stuck out her head. Sally was small, even shorter than I was, about the size of a ten-year-old, with her curly black hair shaved about an inch long.

  I dropped my bag at the foot of the chair beside her desk and sat down. “What’s that spray you use?”

  “You mean after someone is here? It’s an air purifying spray. How are you?”

  Right to the point, that was Sally. I worried her air purifying spray would make my asthma kick up. “I drink too much.”

  I could match her point by point.

  “Oh?” She didn’t sound surprised. “How much do you drink?” She was writing in her file, looking down, fine lines in her light brown skin deepening in concentration as she wrote.

  “As much as I can.” Although the line was getting old, I kept using it. I thought it was funny.

  She smiled and looked up at me. “And how often?”

  “As often as I can.”

  This time she didn’t smile. “What do you drink?’

  “Anything that has alcohol in it. Wine. Beer, Liquor. Mostly wine.”

  And now she frowned. “Do you drink during the day?”

  “No, only at night. After work.”

  “Hangovers?”

  “No.” I fibbed.

  “Memory issues?”

  “Major.” I decided lying wouldn’t help. “And yes, I have hangovers.”

  “Don’t worry, your brain cells will regenerate.”

  Sally was busily taking notes with her petite right hand. That was twice today that people took notes while I talked. I flashed back to Creston leaning his lithe body against the window frame of the interview room.

  “How are you feeling in general?”

  “Fine, mostly, a little crabby. Distracted. My mind wanders. I’m trying to make some changes.”

  “Sounds like not drinking would be a place to start.”

  “I don’t know how to stop. Can you help me with this?”

  Sally sat back and ran her fingers through her wiry hair. It stood straight up, making her look electrified. “Sure I can. But you are going to have to do a few little things.”

  “Like stop,” I laughed.

  Her flashing brown eyes smiled. “Not yet. Every morning when you wake up I want you to think of three things you are grateful for.”

  “You mean like, ‘I’m grateful for my children,’ or ‘I’m grateful that I’m not hungry?’”

  “Absolutely. Be grateful for the details of life, things you don’t usually take time to notice.”

  “My dog’s soft fur?”

  “Yes, exactly, like that.”

  “Or, the sound of wind in the trees?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”

  I was puzzled. “And the drinking?”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that.” Sally waved her hand dismissively in the air and shut my file.

  “But I want to stop drinking.” I was completely flummoxed.

  “Don’t worry, you will.” Sally stood up and ushered me to the door. “Come back next week after you’ve done your homework. Every morning when you wake up. Three things you are grateful for. Make sure you actually feel the gratitude.”

  I shook my head as I walked past her and out the door. “Okay-y-y-y,” I said doubtfully. “Thanks, Sally, see you next week.”

  I got out to the street and searched for my car. Where had I left it? Oh there, across the road. Brain cells regenerate, do they? Good thing. I had forgotten to pay her. Oh well, I’ll catch up next time. Three things. How on earth would that stop me from drinking? I had better hurry back to the office. I stepped over a Tim Horton’s coffee cup in the gutter. That was the shortest appointment on earth. I could even get back before lunch and talk to Cindy about my interview.

  When I pushed through the glass door of the fifth floor of the Express building I could see that almost everyone was at their desks, heads turned towards computers and fingers tapping wildly. What was going on? The next edition wasn’t for hours yet. A long fluorescent light flickered in the far corner, promising a migraine to anyone who was light sensitive. Cindy’s red hair shone like a flaming beacon in the middle of the room, beside my empty desk. I sauntered over.

  Cindy didn’t look up as I eased myself into my chair. “So, what’s up? Where’ve you been?” she whispered out of the side of her mouth.

  I looked around to see why she was being so secretive and saw that Shirley’s door was shut and the blinds were down. But Doug’s door was shut too. That was strange.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “There’s a new video of the mayor giving a group of kids the finger while stoned and drunk. Unbelievable. It’s just been released by the judge. Shirley, Doug, and Sampson are huddled in Shirley’s office, watching it. Morrison is in there too. All the poo-bahs.” Catherine Sampson was the paper’s publisher and Paul Morrison the main legal council, Russell Whetstone’s boss. “No idea when Sampson is going to be coming out, but she will be revved and we all want to look like we’re on our toes. Story of the decade. Right up there with that video of the police beating up that guy at the G-8.”

  If the police were right and Todd’s death had something to do with the theft of Canada’s fresh water, that would be the story of the decade. And it would be my story. But I didn’t think this was the case. He wasn’t the type. Not that I knew what the type was. I said, “The finger? Really?”

  “I haven’t seen it, but if I had to guess, he’s probably being a drunken idiot, behaving like a five-year-old.” Cindy rolled her eyes. Toronto’s mayor had been in the news for weeks. It was getting tedious.

  “Gave my statement to the police.”

  Cindy jerked her head up, her big green eyes full of curiosity, “How did it go?”

  I swiveled my hand back and forth from the wrist. “We’ll see. I don’t think they think I did it, but maybe.” I rotated my chair towards my computer and ran my hand over the touch pad. The screen burst into life and I started to type, vigorously, like everyone else in the room.

  “That’s ridiculous. Of course you didn’t do it. Word on the street is that it was an international hit over stealing our water.”

  “I don’t think so, but thanks.”

  “You don’t? Who interviewed you?” Cind
y, being a crime reporter, knew most the cops.

  “Well, that’s what’s so weird. Staff Sergeant Stapleton.” I kept typing.

  Cindy sat still. She was incredulous, her green eyes as round as saucers and her hair bobbing like a red ember in the light, “Wow. Stapleton? He’s a big kahuna!”

  “I know. Plus there were two other guys in the room as well. Creston and Stokes.”

  “I know those guys. Creston’s a good guy, but Stokes?” Cindy smothered a laugh. “But something high level is going on, Robin. They’re homicide detectives with an international specialty. Must have been brought in from their home division.”

  “They have no idea why he’s dead. There’s no outward clue. All of your NASH things were mentioned. They’ve ordered high level tox screens.”

  “They’re treating it seriously, that’s for sure, and that means there’s something more than meets the eye.”

  “Anyway, I told them all about the convention, the internet site, the date, and even Jack England.”

  “Jack England? You didn’t tell me about him. What’s he got to do with anything?”

  “Yeah, I did. Last night after my date with Radcliffe. I called you, remember? You were going to check him out for me?” By the look on her face I could tell that she hadn’t remembered my call. I didn’t think she would.

  Cindy was apologetic. “Don’t recall a thing about this.”

  “Well, I had woken you up. You had gone to bed early.”

  Cindy inclined her head as the memory sort of came alive, “Oh, right. Sorry about that. What he’d do?”

  I looked at what I was typing. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. From the depths of my very first typing class in high school had risen the one line everyone had to type, and type quickly, to learn the keyboard. I could see Cindy’s nose twitching for a story. I needed to show who was in control. I warned her, “This is off the record, Cindy. He accosted me in the street and wanted to know why I was meeting Radcliffe.”

  “He what?”

  “Yeah, he pinned me to a wall and warned me off Radcliffe.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “To Jack-OFF.”

  Cindy laughed out loud this time. “You have such a gutter mouth, MacFarland.”

  So, she had sensed my warning and backed off.

  I said, “It wasn’t funny at the time.” I remembered how my heart had been thumping and my shoulder blades digging into the wall.

  “What else did the cops want to know?”

  She was gasping for the story. I had to trust her not to scoop me. “They asked me why I agreed to see a guy I had never seen a photograph of.”

  “Did you tell them that you’d been drinking?”

  “Of course not. How did you know?”

  “Oh, pulleezze.”

  I had been reprimanded. “Yeah, they asked me how much I drank. I think they guessed.”

  “Did you tell them the truth?”

  I went on the defense. “Listen, don’t bug me about it, okay? I already saw the naturopath and I have begun treatment.” I wondered if being grateful for three things in the morning counted as treatment.

  Cindy looked impressed and untouched by my rebuke. “So, what do you have to do? Go to AA or something like that? Snap an elastic band that’s on your wrist every time you want a drink? Count to fifty before raising a glass?”

  I laughed, “No, she’s helping me.” How she was helping me I didn’t want to say. I somehow wanted to keep this journey private. Plus, it sounded weird. Three grateful things?

  A cloud crossed Cindy’s face and she sucked in her lips. Cindy could handle professional rebukes. Personal rejection was another matter entirely. She knew she had been shut out. The lack of detail was her clue. Would she press the issue or let it go?

  “Well, that’s great Robin, I’m proud of you.” Her bravado barely covered up her hurt feelings. But, she had let it go.

  “Well, let’s see how I do before we start saying hooray. I’m still allowed to drink, so tonight should be fun.” My apology.

  “Did you want to go for lunch?” Her acceptance.

  “What about those guys in there? Shouldn’t we look good for when they come out?” My fingers had been flying over the keys while I talked to Cindy. I had filled a whole page with the activities of a very fast brown fox.

  “Believe me, the mayor’s antics aren’t going to stop for some time. Those guys are going to be in and out of that office for weeks, trying to report the truth and not get sued.”

  “You’re not on the story?”

  “Are you nuts? Wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole. I have kids, you know, and I can’t risk too much. I actually find it scary that a mayor is chumming up with the wrong kind of people. He’s often in the wrong place at the wrong time. People he knows are getting murdered. He drinks like a fish. Besides, I wasn’t assigned to it.”

  The truth was out. “He hasn’t been charged with anything yet, right?”

  Cindy looked a bit embarrassed. For all her spouting off, she was a firm believer in that old maxim, innocent until proven guilty. “Not yet, but where there’s smoke, there’s fire, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m worried the police will think about me.”

  Cindy laughed, “You’re hot sistah, but not that hot!”

  Suddenly Shirley’s door opened and I sped up my typing. A herd of dark suited people spilled into the newsroom. It looked like a football scrum that had gone cuckoo, with the players scattering off the field, heads down and charging through the defense in all directions. Cindy and I both were typing like crazy, along with everyone else. Feverish human industry hummed. And then the suits were gone, leaving in their wake a vacuum that filled slowly with silence. A thrum of quiet descended upon the room as everyone stopped their frenetic typing. Faces looked up, questions framed by raised eyebrows.

  Shirley bopped out of her office behind the lingering smell of power and sashayed through the rows of desks to what was called The Speaker’s Corner. The Speaker’s Corner was a raised area of the room towards the back, where the coffee machine perked away on a makeshift kitchen counter over some built in cupboards. She turned slowly, leaned her buttocks against the counter, and faced the room while running her hands over her hips, smoothing the wrinkles out of her tight faux-silk skirt. She was going to make an announcement.

  “You will soon find in your inbox a link to a video of the mayor of this fine city, Toronto The Good, ranting away. He is weaving and bobbing up and down a street and gesturing wildly, flipping the bird left, right, and centre, most notably to some kids playing in the street.”

  Somebody hooted but Shirley seemed saddened by what she had seen. “This video will be shown, I am sure, worldwide, and will discredit the efforts our leaders have made, over the past decade, to put Canada on the international map as a country of some stature, and to demonstrate that we are not simply bimbos in flannel shirts drinking home brewed moonshine while waving chainsaws.”

  All the men in the room looked down, probably remembering the last time they had been drinking beer and cutting down trees. Shirley acknowledged the embarrassment. “What we do in our private time at the cottage is no one’s business.” There were some hesitant chuckles and then outright laughs as the tension left the room.

  “The mayor of the city defies description, although the word ‘asshole’ comes to mind. We have assigned our toughest and most senior investigative reporters, Stanley Wong and Karen Marumbo, to this ongoing story, after the initial and comprehensive introductory coverage by Cynthia Dale.”

  Shirley pushed herself off the counter to launch her shapely form down the long aisle towards her office. Some of the male reporters watched her hips swaying through their eyelashes as they pretended to look at their screens. As she passed my station, her peter pointer tapped my desk and gesticulated t
owards her office.

  I had been summoned. Oh geez, now what?

  16.

  SHIRLEY’S SIGNAL TO FOLLOW HER into her office set off an alarming series of bangs against my rib cage. I was getting seriously worried about my heart. Adrenalin surged through my body and I felt I was heading for some kind of disaster. What sort of attack would I have? Heart? Or anxiety?

  I absurdly gathered up some things off my desk to take to my grilling and stuffed them into my bag like talismans. A gum wrapper, a tube of lipstick, a paper clip, and a six-inch ruler. As if these items would protect me from Shirley’s wrath. She could be brutal and she was in a mood. I was certain the picture of her family in her office was face down.

  But somewhere in the hamster wheel of my mind blossomed a new concept: I was not worthless. As it caught root and grew, I took a few breaths and came to a fresh resolve. I wasn’t going to be a fading bloom in Shirley’s office. Standing straight by my desk with the inane objects packed into my bag, I quickly reviewed the facts of my cop interview so I could be rock solid and forthright.

  Shirley held her office door open for me and, briefly forgetting my resolution, I crept by her, head down, in shrinking violet fashion. I quickly held it up again. I was a new me, blast it! A lily. A hyacinth.

  She shut the door and flounced around to her side of the desk, her eyes mowing me down with impatience. With a ringed hand and long fuchsia nails she gouged the air above one of her file-covered chairs. I was to sit down.

  “As you now know,” said Shirley, a smile on her face that did not quite reach her eyes, “we are very busy around here with concerns about the leadership of our city. The legal counsel, Paul Morrison is on it, so that we are factually accurate in everything we write and can’t be sued by the mayor’s office. Every word that goes out about that mayor must have Morrison’s approval.” As if suddenly remembering that I was in her office, she added, “You don’t need to use him, or Russell Whetstone, do you? I mean, how did it go? At the police station?”

  Given Shirley’s grim mood, I decided to keep my answers upbeat. I pushed back a lock of hair that had fallen in my face. “It went well,” I lied. “No problemo.”