Stung

by William Deverell

  She’ll do just fine.

  * * *

  Nancy Faulk drives, Ariana Van Doorn is beside her, and they talk about the German Nobel winner, Hoff, who didn’t make the team. Something about plagiarizing a student’s work. I’m in the back seat with my travel-weary lawyer and because of all the rain and the honking I can’t catch all their words, so I lean forward.

  “It took some gall,” Ariana says, “given he was also making out with her. His wife is filing for divorce. It’s pretty bloody awful.”

  “Yeah, tell me about it,” Nancy says.

  Nancy’s husband stole their Audi, allegedly, so we are in her smaller Leaf. Beauchamp’s battered brown suitcase is in the trunk. We are taking him for a ride, though it’s slow going to the point of immobility — we’re jammed behind a Queen streetcar in the cold, driving rain, as emergency vehicles roar by, an ambulance, cops, screaming around the corner and up Bathurst.

  “Where are we going?” Arthur demands, grumpy despite having won the day. He’s definitely ready for bed, and, to be honest, a shower. (No offence intended, Dear Diary, should he ever read you.)

  “Semi-detached in Parkdale,” says Nancy. “Lovely old street called Beaconsfield, a brisk half hour by foot to my office. Owner’s a swindler, or was. Punky Kiefer. Owes me for getting him off with two years on eight counts of bank fraud. Not due for parole until summer — the trial can’t go that long.”

  With opening day less than a month away, Nancy obviously doesn’t want any more last-minute theatrics, and plans to keep Arthur around, sort of like a truant on strict terms of bail. I guess that’s why his glum face: he doesn’t find Toronto electric and fun. Misses his best friend, the hero of Quarry Park, still viral on the web. Why does a dog get to be man’s best friend? Who’s a woman’s best friend? Why shouldn’t man’s best friend be a woman?

  How is Beauchamp faring with his wife anyway? It’s known he blew her off on a hotel date last week here in Toronto. Makes you wonder why. He doesn’t give off that goatish vibe that many older guys do, and the concept of him getting nookie on the side seems inconceivable.

  “I shall return to Garibaldi Island for Easter.” This is Arthur’s growly voice that he’d used in court. “This weekend. Friday through Monday. Margaret will join me. We have been apart all year!”

  I know what it’s like. I have Technicolor dreams of Chase joining me, which is why Lucy went, “See you later, masturbator.” Not a word from him since his postcard: Happy New Year to All Bee-ings! My loving him, my needing him, is stupid and a waste of energy. We’re different animals. He’s the Arctic fox, I’m the city raccoon.

  Nancy promises Arthur his Easter break and he pledges to be back well before the curtain opens on May 13. Bargain made, Nancy wiggles her Leaf past the streetcar, the jam breaks, and we move again. Beauchamp stares bleakly out his window, as if finding confirmations everywhere of his resolve to live on his rustic nowhere island.

  The conversation turns to the more agreeable matter of how things went today in court. At one point, Ariana says to Arthur, “You came in there wanting a fight. I think you’re a rogue.” She has this big, throaty laugh.

  “Always stand up to a bully.” Said with his eyes closed.

  “He likes to soften them up early,” says Nancy.

  Arthur: “I actually wanted to see how taking a run at her might work with a jury.”

  This is totally cool, being in close quarters with these two eagle beagles, getting the inside poop on how to work judges over.

  Arthur is still talking with his eyes closed. “Sometimes they forget their role, and you have to remind them. This one seems to want to get her nose into things.”

  “Her twitchy nose,” says Nancy.

  “Liberal judges bore me, they’re too accommodating. I actually prefer the bloody-minded ones. You don’t get lazy, you stay on your toes. The first task is to teach jurors that judges aren’t anointed by the gods, they’re prone to error like any human, and ought not to be followed blindly, like some charismatic faith healer.”

  I ask, “Were you surprised when the prosecutor agreed with you?”

  A long moment, and I wonder if my question put him to sleep. Then: “He hopes to disarm me. He knows I prefer Crowns who either toady to the bench or come on like gangbusters. He’s biding his time, waiting like a cobra for the moment to strike.”

  I want to ask Could you be a little more melodramatic? Nancy, who is laughing, obviously gets it that he’s playing with me. She has a more gentlemanly view of Khan’s purpose: “He wants Donahue to back off so they can have a fair fight. He wants to go mano-a-mano with the Left Coast champ.”

  Turn on Beaconsfield, and halfway up the block on the right is a three-storey heritage red-bricker with veranda and yard space. This château has got to have at least three bedrooms, three baths. I grab Arthur’s suitcase and ignore his protests as I lug it to the door. I want to look inside. How do I finagle a spare room?

  4

  Friday, April 19

  On this the first day of Passover, as the observant celebrate freedom (Let my people go!), it’s business as usual at Fourteen Division, on Dovercourt Road, where Constable Louella Baker presides over the bail sign-in counter and constantly complains about being a human word processor — she wants to be out busting bad people.

  I tell her she could start with the trolls who want to send me to the ovens. She listens with sympathy but I know the cops can’t do much. Some of these drama Nazis claim to want to get it on with me, though they mean rape. Others come right out and say it, if they can get past the censors. The full-blown psychopaths prefer penetration by large or sharp instruments. I’ve finally renounced all social media. I mostly use my iPhone as a phone.

  “You’re a day late, and you missed Monday.” Louella phoned a short while ago, demanding I get my bony white ass down here.

  “Hey, I was in court Monday.”

  “Doesn’t matter, it’s another stupid rule. I can give you some leeway if you apply in advance, otherwise I get crucified.”

  She lets me sign the Thursday page. I don’t want her crucified, because she gives me a “You go, girl,” whenever we talk about my case. Her stepdad, a farm worker, died of cancer from pesticide spraying.

  I ask, “Any news?”

  “Yeah, finally — a duty roster next month riding shotgun on patrol. See you Monday. Show up. Make me look good.”

  The heavy late-winter rains have ebbed at last, but I keep my poncho on for the drizzle as I mount my faithful steed and Hi Ho my way to my new digs on Beaconsfield, a quick trip away.

  I wasn’t sure how to approach Beauchamp. Maybe something like, I am but a penniless waif, dear sir, and have nowhere to go. Or this: the trolls know where I live and are causing me paroxysms of paranoia.

  But I couldn’t get up the nerve to lie to him, because I don’t fear these sewer rats that much, they’re all bluster, misfits with their repressed sense of inadequacy. I did the weaselly thing and told Nancy I was stranded and did she think Arthur would mind if I crashed at her client’s house until I had to go to jail. No loud music. No wild parties. I’d make granola and he could share.

  Beauchamp told her he would welcome company.

  I’ve got a second-floor room, he the master bedroom on the main floor. The house is ponderously furnished in a style that may have been popular sixty years ago, fat chairs, tasselled hassocks, tubular desk, porcelain counters, clanky radiators, a moose head sticking out of a wall above a Naugahyde armchair.

  I have the place to myself for the long weekend. Arthur flew off this morning to his Gulf Islands. Margaret Blake is there now. We have been apart all year! Sounds like Arthur’s horny, but I can’t somehow visualize the aging barrister having sex. Not that I’m trying to.

  I reckon that during the trial I can bike from Beaconsfield to the courthouse far faster than going by streetcar. Lucy, who is
already getting out of shape, will be chauffeured there by Dick Two. I worry that she has started to enjoy the life, the comforts.

  Yesterday, as Richard helped her gather up her shit at the Sorauren loft, he couldn’t look me in the eye — what, just because I didn’t share his feelings? He offered to come back in his U-Haul and move my stuff too, but I said it’s looked after, which it wasn’t — until Okie Joe phoned and said he’d like to grab a coffee with me.

  Joe’s girlfriend, country-cool Arlene, drove up here three months ago in an old pickup that still has valid Oklahoma plates, and we loaded it up this morning with my meagre possessions: clothes, toiletries, music, laptop, cables, miscellaneous electronics and gewgaws, more books than anything. Espresso maker. Hash pipe. A little bit of weed. Manuscript.

  And, oh, yeah, the ghastly Brazilian snake earrings that Howie gave me on the night of our last, climactic date. I’d forgotten about them.

  Joe and Arlene were helping pack my heavy cardboard boxes down from the loft this morning just as Louella phoned. I raced off before I could ask Joe why he needed to talk to me. I assume it’s something personal. Maybe he wants my advice on whether to propose to Arlene. What am I, an expert?

  There they are, out front, by the truck, and they’ve already toted all the boxes up to the porch. A couple across the street and two houses up are doing Neighbourhood Watch with binocs, checking out the hippie freaks with the mysterious boxes from a beat-up truck with Oklahoma plates.

  It doesn’t take long to move everything up to the large bedroom I commandeered — a queen bed, I haven’t been in one of those for years.

  Nancy Faulk gifted me several bottles of fine wine from her husband’s cellar (it’s in her house), so I’m able to thank them over a $250 bottle, to wit, a 2008 Domaine Leflaive Puligny-Montrachet Les Folatières Premier Cru. Nancy knows I live off donations and loans — I should crowd-fund myself — and has also stocked cupboards, fridge, and freezer with eats.

  So we fix up a snack lunch and chat, under the rheumy gaze of the moose, about their tech business, which flourishes — they design websites, do programming, and are working on a games app they think is bound to sell. They still network for the American Refugee Society, helping others become good Canadians while they themselves apply for status.

  Okie Joe shifts uncomfortably with his apparent need to talk privately with me, so I invite him out for a toke of Purple Kush that I recently bought at a nearby Canna-Bliss outlet. Arlene gets the message, she doesn’t smoke anyway, and busies herself by setting up my electronics and running some kind of spyware probe to see who reads my texts and emails. And maybe even this journal. If so, fuck you.

  It’s nice now, sunny. The backyard shows evidence of a former garden and dog, and there’s a covered barbecue, a bird feeder, a basketball hoop, and the patio chairs we’re on, the whole middle-class megillah. I have a picture of the money-managing swindler as very straight and normcore, divorced, alone, the ex has custody of the boys.

  The yard is well fenced and well treed, and neighbours would have to crane to see us smoking dope, though I shouldn’t assume they’re all as nosy as the couple with the binocs. But who cares, really — pot is legal in Canada. Though it’s not as much fun without that delightful frisson of paranoia and the self-righteous joy of stink-fingering the system.

  Even though Okie Joe takes a hit, he can’t seem to loosen up, and eventually I say, with that tight holding-it-in voice, “Come out with it, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Chase D’Amato called.”

  I blow out a cumulous cloud of the Kush, choke on it, and have to lube my throat with a fifty-dollar swallow of wine. “Why?” I rasp. “I mean, why you?” To myself: Why not me?

  “He knows I have a secure connection.”

  “So you don’t know where he called from?”

  “He’s somewhere.”

  “That’s reassuring.”

  “That’s why he called. To reassure us. You, in particular. He’s fine. In good health. In a good place. He’s got a job. A new identity.”

  When comes the reveal?

  “He said to give you a hug.” And he puts an arm around me —awkwardly.

  “He found someone else.” I hear myself and want to vomit. I’m the abandoned heroine of a shitty soft-porn romance novel.

  “Nothing like that,” Joe says. “He loves you, but . . .” Deep breath. “Hey, Rivie, I kind of resent being the messenger. I told him that.”

  “Fine. Spell it out.”

  “Basically he wants you to live your own life. Not wait for him. He doesn’t want your feelings for him to distract you from the causes we share. He wants you, all of us, to focus on our trial, to win, to make a statement that will have more impact than all his Greenpeace campaigns rolled into one. End quote. He also said he will always be your friend, however many miles apart.”

  How cowardly was my hero, breaking it off through an agent. He was afraid of dealing directly with me, didn’t want me asking who she is, the bitch who connived him into her bunk. Some wilderness whore.

  “Anyway, I hate being thrust into the middle of this. I told him you’d probably like to hear from him directly.”

  “How?”

  “I have a safe mail drop.”

  This is not a high. This is a classic marijuana downer.

  5

  Eventually, the Purple Kush and wine power down, leaving only a headache. Anger and jealousy are replaced by melancholy and self-recrimination. What am I moaning about? I gave up on Chase D’Amato months ago, among the wolves, squirrels, and pine grosbeaks of Algonquin Park. We hadn’t made any pledges to each other. We had an excellent physical thing going. Not much else. Politics. Cerebral stuff. Chess. At which I usually lost.

  So it’s not as if I was jilted, but it hurts the same way, except that the ego takes more of a beating than the heart. I feel stupid that I let pride rule my emotions. If he’s found someone to love, that’s good. Good for her too, especially if she doesn’t mind living in a tent and shitting in a bucket.

  I ponder all this while I arrange my room, put my stuff in closet and drawers. Eventually, aided by another, gentler puff, I decide my heart isn’t broken. I’m a survivor. In three weeks the world will watch our trial. I can’t allow myself to be distracted by something so trivial as love.

  This evening, I am to meet with Lucy at the old place: finish cleaning up, feed the cats one last time. I’m sure Lucy will find some excuse to show up late or not at all. I feel fucking friendless.

  * * *

  But when I arrive, just after six, she’s there. With a mop and pail, doing the floors with a sullen vehemence, barely acknowledging her best friend. The borrowed vacuum is out, the washer and drier going, the anarchist heroes are down from the wall, replaced by Dr. Wenz’s German expressionists. The cats, banished to the roof deck, glower at us from the windows.

  I want to ask Lucy if she’s on speed or something, and if not, what’s biting her. I need to unload my heavy heart but she pantomimes this not-interested look, pulls back her hair to show me she’s plugged into earbuds, and points to the walls lined with books. There are cobwebs up there among the essays of Schopenhauer and Maeterlinck. I stick a bottle of rare muscatel into the fridge and dutifully retrieve the long-handle duster and the three-step ladder.

  * * *

  Mopping done, furnishings back in place, Lucy ruefully contemplates her next task, the bathroom. I indicate with hand signals: if you do the bathroom I’ll do the bedroom. Its door is closed, and I head that way, but she bars my progress, pulls off her buds, and says, “I need a drink, I’ve had a berserk day.” She plonks down on a chair by the dining table.

  I open the muscatel. “Where’s Richard?”

  “I ran off, told him not to wait. But he will wait till death do us part. He’s unbearable. I’m dying, Rivie. I can’t survive this trial if I have to come home to him every
night. You conned me into this. Help me find some way to tell him it’s over.”

  Oh, poor you. Forced to live in the lap of luxury. I have just had my heart broken, but do you hear me wailing? Anyway, I don’t want your sympathy. It would be like grovelling for it. I decline to share these thoughts, and instead suck it up enough to be supportive. “Tell him you need to live alone. You don’t want your feelings for him to distract you from the cause of saving the planet. Don’t tell him you’re still in love with Ray.”

  Lucy takes a gulp of muscatel. “That brings up a problem.”

  “With Ray?”

  “I got this extremely garbled text about how he got beamed up and can’t come down.”

  Shockingly, I’m capable of laughter. She says she’s not joking. She reads from her phone: “She beamed me up, baby, and I’m stuck.” He added, “Rapid-Loans.” Sooky-Sue’s uncle runs a loan shark franchise by that name out of a building he owns on Ossington, and she and her beamed-up boyfriend stay in a one-bedroom on the third floor doing whatever recovering acidheads do.

  Which turns out to be heavier than LSD. “Yagé,” Rockin’ Ray mumbled over and over as Lucy led the wild-haired, wild-eyed, sleep-deprived freak down the stairs and out to a waiting taxi. Yagé. Ayahuasca, from the Amazonian jungle. Trips for ultra-hips.

  Lucy had found him on the third-floor landing, apparently evicted by his lover, incoherent, hearing voices — which he actually was, his cell tuned to a live podcast by a surgeon describing a heart bypass.

  I look at the bedroom door. “He’s in there sleeping it off?”

  “All day. The bad news is he has to go in for his weekly test tomorrow. Blood, breath, and piss.”

  The bad news apparently has occult power because the bedroom door swings open and Rockin’ Ray, wearing only his Stanfield’s, makes a beeline for the bathroom. Sinbad, startled, nearly jumps from the roof.