Finn stared at his stenciled shoulder blade, angling the mirror back and forth. “Yeah,” he said. “I do. I think it will be great.” He smiled. “Bring it on!”
While she was waiting for the stencil to dry, she selected the needles and inks. Green, blue, a touch of yellow in the eyes…
“I just want black with some shading,” Finn said.
“You sure?”
“Yeah. I want it really simple. Kind of pure.”
She mentally adjusted her vision of the tattoo. Yeah, she could see that. It would work. And it would fit her client’s comfort level. He wasn’t screaming “collector.”
“Right on,” she said. She disinfected the chair and laid protective plastic on the surface. “Have a seat. And make sure you are comfortable. This will take a couple of hours.”
Finn straddled the chair, resting his arms on the back. She put together her tattoo gun, opening the needle in front of him and attaching it to the bar in the gun. Then she slid the needle tube over it. She adjusted it until just the tip of the needle could be seen from the edge of the tube. Then she bagged the motor, sealing it with a rubber band.
“We’ll start with the outline, Finn.” She patted down his shoulder blade, removing excess transfer ink, and then smoothed a coating of Vaseline over his skin. She dipped the needle into a cap of black ink, drawing up a bit of ink into the tube. With her right hand, she stretched the left side of the tattoo, and then began the outline.
“You’re a lefty,” Finn said.
“Uh-huh.”
“So’m I.”
“Cool.” She wiped off excess ink, and began another line. “Your skin loves ink, by the way.”
“What do you mean?”
“For some people, their bodies don’t like ink. But the ink goes really smoothly in you. I’m the same way.”
“When did you get your first tattoo?”
“I was sixteen.”
“You serious?”
“Uh-huh. My mother almost killed me.”
“What was it?”
“The usual. A skull.” The lie came so naturally now that she almost forgot that the tattoo had not been a skull.
“Can I see it?”
She wiped off more ink, and turned to refill the tube. “No. I had it covered up. It was bad.”
“Who did it?”
She got asked about her first tattoo all the time by new clients. Years ago, she could barely talk about it, but she soon was able to gloss over it and move on. But today, she felt her shoulders tensing. Maybe because she was back in Halifax. Glad that Finn couldn’t see her face, she said, “An old boyfriend.” She kept her tone cool. Even though she liked Finn, this was “no fly” territory.
The conversation moved on to Finn’s work. The crazy antics of the dogs he walked. He laughed out loud at her stories about Foo. They talked about creating things with their hands—how he loved renovating and transforming houses. “A bit like tattooing, I guess,” he said.
She felt a spark of excitement. This guy got her work, her art. Her soul. “Tattooing is about personal transformation for so many of my clients.” She realized, at the end of their three-hour session, that she hadn’t enjoyed talking with a guy so much in a long time. “Okay, we are done. And it rocks.” She wiped away the extra ink and put down her tattoo gun. “Wanna take a look?”
Finn got off the chair and checked out the tattoo in the mirror. “Wow. You are a true artist.”
A warm flush prickled Kenzie’s skin.
She studied his tattoo. His shoulders were well-muscled, and the poised power of the dog, ready to spring across his back, blew her away.
“Can I take a picture?” she asked. “I want to add it to my collection of favorites.”
“Sure.”
Yoshi came over to admire Kenzie’s work while she rooted in her bag for her camera. “Very fine work, Kenzie. Horifuyu would be pleased.”
“Thanks.” She grinned. “I was inspired. Great concept—” great canvas; she wouldn’t say those words in front of Finn “—and the ink went in real smooth.” She took a couple of pictures.
“Here, let me take one of you together,” Yoshi said.
Kenzie stood next to Finn. He slung an arm around her shoulders—“My good arm,” he joked—and Yoshi snapped the shots. “Give me your email and I’ll send them to you.”
“Thanks.”
“Maybe I should send Foo over for a little exercise. It’s too easy for him to get fat here.” The words popped out, but as she spoke them, she realized it was a great idea.
Finn eyed Foo, who returned his gaze with lazy interest. “Yeah, I think he’d be good with the other dogs.”
“How about tomorrow?” She applied some lotion to his tattoo and covered it up. “You can put your shirt on.”
He pulled it over his head. “Sounds good. Where do you want me to pick him up?”
“I’ll be here by ten tomorrow morning.”
“See you then.”
It felt like a date.
It’s for Foo. Not you.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
13
Kate tapped her pen on the notepad that lay on her desk, the phone cradled to her ear. She had been on hold for—she glanced at her watch, her mouth twisting—oh, six minutes too long for her taste.
Well, what else did you expect from the Honorable Harry Owen, Kate?
She knew she shouldn’t feel irritated, given that Harry Owen had agreed to a phone call with her on short notice, but her extended wait allowed her to repent the fact she had consented to this dirty job. For she knew it could not be anything but. Harry Owen was a flagrant fearmongerer. She had enough terrors, thank you very much, to not be reminded of them by her elected official.
His noted dalliances did not improve Kate’s opinion of him. He was probably a closet sexist, enjoying the lovely young interns on Parliament Hill while hiring all his hotshot cronies who had no real skills except the ability to spell their surnames.
Ooh, that was rather cynical.
Remember, you have a job to do, Kate. You have to win him over, so stop sneering. Frances Sloane—and God help you, Don Clarkson—are depending on you… .
“Hello. Ms. Lange, this Harry Owen.” The voice of Canada’s youngest member of Parliament was energetic, smooth. It fit in nicely with the findings from her late-night Google search: a thirtysomething confirmed bachelor, former corporate lawyer, of multiple immigrant extraction tramping unimpeded on the road to ministerial glory.
She straightened. “Thank you for agreeing to speak with me, Mr. Owen.”
“Sorry for keeping you waiting. I was on a mind-blowingly dull conference call. It is truly a pleasure to meet you.” His tone held genuine admiration. “I’m a big fan of yours.”
Oh?
“But I’m afraid I have another call scheduled in less than ten minutes, so before we begin, let’s make sure that we can even have this conversation.”
“Of course,” Kate murmured. She knew exactly what he was going to ask. And she knew exactly what she was going to say.
Maybe this lobbying gig could be fun, after all.
“Are you on the registry for lobbyists?” he asked. “My assistant checked this morning and didn’t see your name.”
The first shot had been fired across the bow.
Kate studied the fax on her desk from the Office of the Commission of Lobbying. “I sent in my report to the registry last night. I received confirmation a few hours ago. It was faxed to your office just after lunch.” Fortunately, the registrar had been sympathetic to her circumstances and recognized the need for urgency. Her bona fides were straightforward to confirm, and within two hours she was officially a federally registered Consultant Lobbyist.
“I see. Just hold a moment, please.”
Kate leaned back in her chair, a smile curving her lips. She was enjoying herself. Perhaps a little too much.
A minute later, he said, “Yes, we just received it.” He cleared his th
roat. “Now, what can I do for you, Ms. Lange?”
“As I explained to your assistant, I am representing a client who is stricken with an incurable and horrific disease that afflicts her motor neurons.”
“Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis,” he said. “So sad.”
Very impressive, Harry. You have done your homework.
“As you may remember,” Kate continued, “a woman named Sue Rodriguez mounted a legal challenge against the criminalization of assisted suicide almost twenty years ago.”
“And the court upheld the Criminal Code. Assisted suicide is a crime in Canada.”
He was sending her a message with his subtle emphasis of “crime.” “Yes. But my client is desperate, Mr. Owen. She wants to take control of her life. Die on her own terms.”
There was a pause.
“Ms. Lange, the Criminal Code provision is in place for a reason. It protects the vulnerable from being euthanized.”
A sweeping, emotionally powerful sound bite that would work well on TV.
“That was the concern of the Supreme Court,” Kate said. “But subsequent research has shown that the slippery slope the court feared did not materialize.”
“Ms. Lange, as you yourself have experienced—”
You’d better lose that patronizing tone, Mr. Owen.
“—we are facing increasingly violent criminals, as well as a severe increase in cyber fraud, child pornography, drug and financial crimes.” He must have read her mind, because his voice was no longer patronizing, but instead sounded resolute. “I am one of the members working on a committee to toughen our criminal laws. Our goal is to send a message to anyone who is thinking of committing a crime, not to open a door for opportunists to commit murders. I am a firm believer in deterrence. And if that doesn’t work, punishment. Someone shouldn’t get away with murder.” He ended on a final, passionate note.
The power of his charisma, the strength of his convictions, resonated over the phone line.
Her job would be that much more difficult with a political adversary such as Mr. Owen.
Kate knew why the member of Parliament held such passionate conviction. The world knew why. In fact, Harry Owen had often said that the bullet his father took in his spine during a late-night holdup when Harry Owen was eight was one of the reasons Harry chose to go into law, and then politics.
“Mr. Owen, I beg to differ. Assisted suicide is not murder. It is assisting someone to take their own life. And suicide is not a criminal offense.” Before he could respond, Kate added, “I’ve studied your political platform. I know that you are bullish on deterrence and, if that doesn’t work, punishment.”
It was the third arm of the corrections model that Harry Owen had eliminated from his platform: rehabilitation. “But I also know that you are very much in favor of autonomy. That is why you didn’t support the gun registry.” Several years ago, the government at the time put in place a long-gun registry. Anyone who owned a gun had to register it. It was recently disbanded.
Harry Owen had been outspoken about his disdain for the registry in the past, even going so far as to suggest that the gun control legislation in Canada should be modified to allow citizens to carry handguns.
“If my father had had a gun the night he was held up, he wouldn’t be in a wheelchair now. And that bastard—pardon my language—wouldn’t be living off social assistance and getting his cable TV paid for by the taxpayers, of which my father is one.”
Ouch.
“I don’t understand why you are lobbying this issue,” he said. “The Criminal Code is the only thing that keeps innocent people from getting hurt. It protects people, Ms. Lange.” His voice lowered. “Pardon me for saying this, but I would have thought that after your experiences, you would be in favor of making the Code even stronger. You barely survived being murdered.”
“I may have survived being attacked—” Kate said, her mind racing as she struggled to find a way to break through his indomitable wall of righteousness. Screw it. I’ll tell him the real reason I’m doing this. “—but I may not survive the consequences of it. Did you know I might be infected with an incurable disease that would completely rob me of cognitive function?”
There was a shocked silence. Then he said, “My God. No. I had no idea. I’m so sorry.”
“Me, too.” Kate swallowed. “That was, by the way, confidential information.”
“Yes, of course.”
Was anything confidential in politics when someone was trying to come out on top?
She closed her eyes. She no longer enjoyed this conversation. She wanted to end it as soon as possible. “So, to answer your question, that is why I am helping my client. She deserves—just like any of us—to die with dignity.”
“What exactly do you want from me?”
Kate tried to swallow her frustration. He was not making this easy for her. Welcome to politics, Kate.
“My client doesn’t have the months or years it will take to mount another legal challenge of the Criminal Code. The public climate has changed since the Rodriguez case, Mr. Owen. We want the government to strike down the provision in the Criminal Code making assisted suicide a crime. This could be an opportunity for the government to show its compassionate side.” Kate waited.
He exhaled. “Kate, I’m sorry. But there is a reason the Supreme Court ruled against Rodriguez, and there is a reason that assisted suicide is in the Criminal Code. People could claim that they were asked to help kill their loved ones—and then cash in on their insurance policies. It is not an issue that the government is prepared to explore. Just a moment—” He paused. “My assistant says that my next call is about to begin.” His tone became formal. “Thank you for sharing your client’s concerns, Ms. Lange.”
“Mr. Owen, please reconsider,” Kate said, her voice urgent. She was losing him. “This could be a savvy move by the government. And it would make a huge difference to my client—”
“I’m afraid you are knocking on the wrong door.” His voice now had an edge to it. “Assisted suicide is a crime.”
“And forcing someone to suffer terribly is not?” She let that sink in. “Call me if you change your mind.”
He hung up on her.
She stared at the phone. “Jerk.”
She had revealed one of her deepest secrets—and he’d told her to get lost.
She dialed Frances Sloane’s number.
“Phyllis, it’s Kate Lange. Is Frances able to take my call?”
“Oh, yes, Ms. Lange. She’s doing better this afternoon.” There was a note of excitement in Phyllis’s voice. They knew about her scheduled phone call with the M.P. “I’ll just take off her mask so she can speak to you.”
While Kate waited for her client to have her respiratory mask removed, she thought of a few choice curses for the M.P.
“Kate?” Her client’s voice held the same note of anticipation as her caregiver’s.
Kate’s stomach became a hard knot. “Hi, Frances. I just spoke with Harry Owen today. I won’t drag this out—he was a no-go. I’m sorry.”
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