Snow Job

by William Deverell

  She lowered her eyes. “Oh, you.”

  He looked back at the sullen men, offering an apologetic smile. People could think what they want, he couldn’t stop them. If those fellows wanted to believe he had hidden talents as a makeout artist, let them grind their teeth with envy. He’d not been unattractive in his younger years — tall, rangy, considered a bit of a catch, really — and the decades had added a patina of weathered, silver-haired robustness.

  “Only thing in your box is this here flyer from Starkers Cove,” Abraham Makepeace said. “Your, uh, your female associate was in already.” With voice lowered: “Her boyfriend’s back on the island. I thought I should warn you.”

  Arthur nodded, made a show of being absorbed in the Starkers leaflet, a response to islanders’ concerns, rhetoric about how they respected their new neighbours, cherished this special island, and planned a development “in tune with nature,” the obligatory mantra of the uncaring developer. Everyone was invited for a ground-breaking ceremony next month. Food, wine, games for kids, the Garibaldi Highlanders, the Fensom Family Fiddlers, and a touring off-island rock band.

  “They’re real nice folks.” Makepeace nodded in the direction of a rosy-cheeked couple passing out T-shirts to his customers. The shirts featured a corporate logo and two stylized unclothed, well-endowed silhouettes. “Free yourself,” said the embossed words.

  “Everyone will be going,” Makepeace said.

  “What happened to the protest?”

  “Well, that kind of fizzled out.”

  Arthur picked up a pack of pipe tobacco and strolled outside for a smoke just as Mookie Schloss alighted from her Land Rover. “He’s back!” That seemed overly enthusiastic. Last seen, the ex-starlet was raging at her husband over his dishonourable poker bet. “I saw you on the tube, Arthur, you looked so commanding.”

  “And you look as radiant as ever, my dear.” Not quite — some stress lines but still darkly attractive in her middle years.

  “Need a ride?”

  “You’re an angel in a time of need, Mookie.”

  Arthur pulled out his pipe while she ran in for groceries; she was back in minutes, showing off her new T-shirt. “Nudists giving away clothes, that’s original.” As they headed off, she said, “Margaret must be in such a frazzle with everything that’s going on. Was she able to make it back with you?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “I guess it’s really stressful, politics. It must be hard on you guys.”

  By now, Arthur was looking for double meanings in almost anything said to him. But surely Mookie was just being kind.

  As she geared down for Breadloaf Hill, he checked Stoney’s lot for his old Fargo. There it was, under canvas, on blocks, and beside it, mirabile dictu, the rebuilt transmission! He could soon be on wheels again, though carbon-negative Zack and Savannah mocked him for having a love affair with a pickup truck.

  Next door on the Shewfelts’ roof, Santa Claus sat Buddha-like, red-bulbed Rudolph leading the charge of the reindeer. The holiday season would see Margaret’s return — she’d be furious to find the island rife with repugnant rumour.

  Out of the blue: “Herman and I have split up. He’s gone back to Los Angeles.”

  “I’m truly sorry.”

  “Oh, I’m getting by. I sometimes wish more friends would visit.”

  Arthur was flustered, unsure how to respond to this obvious invitation. He stammered something nonsensical about how charming women should never lack company.

  “How sweet. You have such an awesome way with words, so easy to talk to. Hey, if you need to lighten the load about stuff that’s bothering you, you’ll find an attentive listener in a cozy cottage on Sunrise Cove.”

  What was going on here? Rampaging rumour had retooled the old duffer into the island heartthrob. He was seen as available, open to suitors’ beds, his wobbly marriage manifestly doomed. Margaret was definitely in denial with her insistence that locals would laugh off the rumour, her refusal to recognize he still held appeal to the opposite sex.

  Mookie let him off at his gate with a soft kiss on stiff lips that, with lack of use, seemed to have lost the art of puckering. The rich, womanly smell of her. Different from Margaret.

  A light shower announced the arrival of a warm Pacific front with its gift of mild, sea-scented air, which Arthur sucked in greedily, relishing this reprieve from the East’s lung-searing cold. His house seemed to spread its eaves in welcome, smoke spilling from the chimney, promising the cheering solace of a blazing fireplace. The grounds appeared well tended, the lawn lush, fences in repair. Savannah had been yeomanlike in shouldering the tasks of a working farm — without much help from Zack, who’d been long absent and seemed unlikely to stick around.

  Arthur could make him out in the west pasture, with the tractor, digging postholes. The post-setter, DiPalma, seemed in pain, holding his back, a greenhorn in distress. Too many hours conniving at a desk or in airplane seats.

  More convoluted were the labyrinthine rigours being expended on the dock. Stoney was leaning over the water, lowering a two-by-six while shouting instructions to Dog, who was splashing about, to no apparent purpose, in a wetsuit.

  Savannah trotted from the house with an umbrella, closed on him with a hug and a kiss, the second such beneficium in ten minutes, this one met cleanly. She seemed thinner, more sinewy.

  He hoped she might say something about the Episode, about having discussed it with Margaret. But she’d rarely been forthcoming about her disorder. The rumours could not have escaped her. Instead, as she toured him about, she chronicled her run-ins with local fauna: the Great Sheep Escape, the bum-butting ram, the deer that squeezed past the garden gate.

  He praised her skills at farm management. She admitted to having been less adept at local politics: apathy and promises of food, drink, and music had subverted the Norbert Road campaign. Two of those who’d turned out for her last meeting had been wearing Starkers Cove T-shirts.

  But the developers had made concessions, narrowing the swath to be cleared along Lower Mount Norbert Road.

  Finally she said, softly: “I’m sorry I embarrassed you. Stoney and his big mouth.”

  “Margaret thought it was funny.”

  “Well, it is a lark, isn’t it?”

  She laughed and took his arm, and they made their way to the house — despite his better judgment he was titillated, it was as if they were sharing an intimate conspiracy. On the veranda, as he kicked off his muddy brogans, he gestured toward Zack and Ray. “What’s up with those two?”

  “They’re getting on like Batman and Robin. They’re planning some kind of political hanky-panky.”

  “Like what, exactly?”

  “Nothing serious, a diversion, misinformation, something to do with the tar sands. Ray’s idea. He’s pretty imaginative.”

  Arthur chose his words carefully in warning that DiPalma was being checked out and asking her to be circumspect in dealing with him. “He may not be what he appears to be.”

  “No kidding. He’s convinced the locals he’s queer, but that didn’t stop him making a pass at me. He’s the poor man’s James Bond — he only has a licence to fuck. Maybe he swings both ways work-wise too. One day he’s spying for them, the next day for us. I guess that’s fair. He totally admires you — or so he says.”

  “I suspect he suffers some ill-defined neurosis relating to his father, but I think I’d prefer not to know the details.”

  “Hey, we’re just playing him along, Zack and me. We keep testing him. He never quite gets the language of protest. With him, it’s like, ‘Down with the imperialist warmongers, power to the working class.’ With Zack, it’s a mind game, he’s enjoying Ray, and if he can’t convert him he’s going to outsmart him. It’s a kind of male thing, dogs sniffing at each other’s balls.”

  Arthur decided to leave it at that — this wasn’t the time to confront DiPalma.

  While Savannah went off to collect eggs, Arthur tested his club chair, which lacked its
old comfortable fit. He had indeed lost weight, in the bottom and shanks. Exercise and political stress had dampened his appetite.

  He put his feet up, opened his briefcase, frowned over the letter from Hanife Bejko, seeking but not finding hidden meaning. He tried to picture the southern Balkans, a region unvisited during his occasional sallies to Europe. Maybe Albania was like Garibaldi, full of sheep and characters.

  He saw Stoney through the window, jumping around, holding his thumb, a mis-hit with the hammer. Dog was flopping about on the beach like a spastic seal, struggling out of his underwater gear. The workday was coming to an end.

  Savannah came in, humming off key. She swung by him toward the laundry room, stripping off her T-shirt, tossing it in the hamper, lowering her jeans. Nude bending over by Degas.

  There came back, suppressed till now, the tingle he’d felt on awakening beside her, her breast plump as a pillow, her cradling arm, her warm breath in his ear …

  As Zack and Savannah bickered in the kitchen, Arthur and DiPalma hunkered by the fireplace, Arthur sipping tea, DiPalma wincing as he pulled the tab on a can of beer. His second. He’d chugged the first.

  “It isn’t easy being green,” he said, “but it’s a darn sight harder being gay. That was not the most skilful of moves. Now I’m being courted by Kurt Zoller.”

  The accordion-playing island trustee. Arthur was astonished. He’d known him for eight years, hadn’t assumed he preferred men — in fact hadn’t presumed he had any sexual leanings whatsoever.

  “He wants us to come out publicly. Otherwise, I’m an object of pity more than homophobia around this island. People detour when they see me coming, especially the machos.”

  “Amazing. Have you ever considered a career in theatre, Ray?”

  “Played a creditable Stanley Kowalski in an Ottawa Free Theatre production. Ask your neighbour in 10C if the Alumni Theatre still remembers my ‘Mourning Becomes Electra.’” He arched his back, grimacing. “I’m a government employee — I’m used to shovelling papers.”

  A secret sense of humour was unveiled. Arthur said, “I, on the other hand, am healthier now than I was in my youth. Never was much for organized sports.” He wondered if he was playing that mind game himself, the sniffing of balls.

  DiPalma didn’t hesitate. “You’re looking at the man who scored the winning point in the 1990 college intramural water polo championships. Chased some pucks for the Ravens. Those days are over, alas.”

  If it was indeed a mind game, DiPalma had just scored another winning point. The awkwardness he’d displayed on earlier encounters had to be related either to drink or the nervousness of one assigned to probe a prominent couple.

  “Well, Ray, there’s always old-timers’ sports.”

  “Not for me. My medical examiner found some early symptoms of PD.”

  Parkinson’s disease. Thus the impaired balance, the occasional slight tremor. Arthur found himself empathizing with DiPalma. Suddenly it was all making sense, the shuffling walk, the ill-advised comforts of cigarettes and booze, the reaching out to religion. Arthur’s talent at judging character was not flawed after all; his first instincts had been right.

  DiPalma had both a beer and a cigarette going now, the smoke rising up the flue. “Anyway, I’ve finished my stint on Garibaldi. I’m on the road, I’m Zack Flett’s consigliore now. My boss is delighted. He put me in charge of the eco-terrorist section, with my own office.”

  From the kitchen: “Wash your hands before you even fucking touch that cinnamon roll.”

  “Wash your fucking mouth.”

  “Don’t those guys ever stop?” DiPalma sat stiffly, words tumbling out between sips and puffs. “Okay, I talked to the agent I mentioned, Sullivan Clugg, Sully — he liaises with the limeys. He has good intel that an international security firm working out of London — mercenaries, basically, ex-MI5, KGB, Stasi — set up a ghost flight from Montreal last month. On contract for unknown employers. Destination, Albania.”

  DiPalma’s information resonated with such credibility that Arthur wondered why he’d ever doubted him. He showed him Hanife Bejko’s letter. DiPalma lit a fresh cigarette off the one he hadn’t finished, fixed his glasses over his nose, and his mouth fell open as he read the note.

  Finally he looked up. “Oh, baby. Gjirokaster — I’ve been in that town.” He yelped, sucked a knuckle burned by the cigarette in his left hand. “I have to cut down.” He read the note one more time, then looked up with a gleeful smile.

  “Albania. Let’s go.”

  20

  Clara Gracey had moved into 24 Sussex and felt cowed, even bullied, by the thirty-four-room, energy-guzzling limestone mansion, the uncomfortable home of prime ministers since the 1940s. With its creaks and groans and hissing radiators, it was like living in the belly of a wheezy old whale.

  She’d debated whether to move in — tenancy could be brief — but had felt guilty smoking in her chic apartment; here she could make the rules. And hold private council without intrusions.

  Four acres and the Ottawa River and the cover of darkness would shelter Margaret Blake’s arrival. A couple of the gals talking over a glass of wine — it was worth a try. The last hope, really. An expanded, loophole-free Species at Risk Act, half a billion for renewable energy, two more national parks — the cabinet wouldn’t balk at those in exchange for a tie vote, with a compliant Speaker to break it.

  Good riddance to that narcissistic traitor Lafayette — she wouldn’t have to look over her shoulder any more. If an election were forced, he would get his reward, a deserved burial of the Progressive Reform Party.

  So it was opposition 154, government 152, and to scramble for that, Clara had had to promise the seven-toed member for Twillingate that if he hobbled in on crutches he’d be in line for secretary of state for sport and tourism. The vote was set for the day after tomorrow.

  Percival Galbraith-Smythe rang. “Ms. Blake is in the foyer. Shall I send her in?”

  “Of course not. I’ll come out to greet her.”

  She put on her most winning smile, butted her smoke, and headed out, turning the wrong way, finally getting directions from one of her staff.

  Margaret was in the foyer by the grand staircase, looking aghast at its leopard spot carpet, a garish memento from the Mulroney years.

  “Don’t blame me,” Clara said. “Every P.M. since St. Laurent has left his spoor.” Finnerty’s contribution: several hidden bottles of rye.

  They settled in a parlour overlooking the river and the distant twinkling lights of Hull. Margaret chose a settee, crossed her legs, wary, a little tense. She had a good inkling of what this was about. “Stick to your guns,” Pierètte had said. “Buyer beware.”

  She had respect for Clara: it took grit and intelligence to manoeuvre through the old boys’ club to 24 Sussex. But she was an economist wedded to the old thinking, a pedigreed Tory playing the old games, out of touch with the realities facing this besieged planet.

  “White or red?”

  “The white, thank you.”

  “Mandarins, nuts, granola chews — sorry, I’m trying to lose weight. Look at you, you’ve never had that problem.”

  Margaret picked out a nut from the offered tray. Clara poured from a boutique B.C. Chardonnay, not hiding the label.

  “Certified organic,” Margaret said, acknowledging the gesture.

  “They’re always a little more expensive, aren’t they?”

  “Surprising, given the cost of herbicides, fungicides, and the other poisons most of them use.”

  Clara was having trouble with the concept of growing grapes with poison. She didn’t care to mention that winemakers were big contributors.

  Trying not to sound effusive, she dished out compliments on Margaret’s performance on and off the floor, for representing so persuasively Canada’s growing green electorate. “I’m so proud of you. Especially as a woman.”

  “One of those unfortunate accidents of birth, I guess.”

  Clara laughed. This
is what she wanted, a little feminist bipartisanship. “Congratulations, by the way. The last Gallup had you at thirteen per cent.”

  “Thank you, but it’s spread too thinly, isn’t it?”

  “That’s our electoral system, sadly.”

  “If I recall right, Clara, a few years ago you were calling it a skewed system.”

  Clara kicked herself for opening the topic, but Margaret wasn’t through. “It’s a great curiosity, isn’t it, that when in opposition the traditional parties forever talk about a reformed Senate and proportional representation, but it vanishes from the agenda when they’re in power. Here you are at thirty-three per cent with almost half the seats; while our thirteen points translates to one, and I squeaked in.”

  Clara sipped her wine, wondering how to get back on track. “Christ knows you’ll have little trouble holding on to it, Margaret.” A gamble: “Just between friends, and if you repeat this, I’ll deny, but I doubt we’ll try very hard to win Cowichan back. We may just throw a nobody in there for laughs.”

  “Oh? I had understood you were targeting it.”

  “Strategies change.” A deep breath. “Margaret, you’re nobody’s fool. You know why I wanted this little gab with you.”

  Little gab. Girl talk. The P.M. had slipped a rung in Margaret’s esteem. “I’m open to hear you, Clara. I have to warn you — I’ve never learned how to play political prostitute.”

  If the insinuation was meant to draw blood, it worked. Clara sought to control herself, covered by tilting her glass and emptying it.

  Margaret told herself to stop this sniping, it wasn’t very mature. She searched for the source of it — maybe resentment of Clara, that she was to the manner born, thanks to a powerful, connected family, all the breaks and all the perks. “I’m sorry if that seemed sexist or personal. Political compromise is what I have a problem with. Some people think I suffer a stubbornness disability.”

  Clara laughed it off with “Save your shots for the floor of the House,” but it took effort not to lecture this idealist. Compromise — her prostitution — was the lifeblood of the art of politics.