Chapter Two

SUNDAY

“Are you not sleeping, Beatrice?” Met in the herding surge of the congregation for the doors, Velma Lettie’s weather eye traveled Bea’s Sunday Church outfit from hat to shoes, and having seen them all before, had to settle back again on a smoothness of cheek that surely must be puffiness at Bea’s age.

Snapping a glare to ensure that Vera was in tow, Velma slipped her purse strap to the elbow, aimed hymnal and bible in a firm, two-handed grip and plowed up the aisle, catechizing Bea all the way to the porch, “Mother not well? You were down. It’s a worry. And Katherine? You went all that way! And were you disappointed? Of course not, she’s fine. Still at the Art, is she? And still..? Yes. Still no little ones, though. It must be hard. Though some, no doubt, are best without, if they’ve only been to the altar to satisfy themselves. It may be said better to marry than to burn, but I’ve often thought the Apostle Paul spoke more as a man, than a saint. That’s so, isn’t it, Reverend?”

Through the vestibule, milling with husbands hunting hats, with wives smoothing the seats of coats they’d sat on, with children pouring up from basement classrooms waving God in pastels, all fighting to regroup without raising voices and pass to the porch for a murmur and a handshake with the Reverend, Velma hove to and took a hand from her bible to give to the minister, “A lovely service, Reverend. Rather a poor choice of music in the second hymn, but at least people know the words. Do you think we might suggest to Ginny Whelks that she’d be happier with that new baby down in the nursery? Yes. And did we notice poor Jack Wilson was quite unsteady with the offering plate? I won’t say he smelled of drink, mind you. No.”

A duty done, she shifted guns, “Indeed, a thought-provoking lesson, Reverend, although, as I was just saying to Beatrice, I find the Epistles rather too concerned with the male members… the men of that congregation… Corinthians, yes. Greeks, of course, I suppose that was the problem. And Bea was telling us just now of her problems, her worries. Not sleeping well, you can see. Mother’s not good, you know. No. And she’s been down to visit with Katherine. All that distance to drive and still no sign of a Little Blessing, you see, and I was saying that perhaps there was a Lesson there, which those of us who don’t burn, you understand, have a duty to point out. Helpful, as we’re sent to be.”

“Good morning, Beatrice. Now what lesson would that be, Velma Lettie? Morning, Vera.” The first year of his Strawbridge pastorate, Robert Ross had been terrorized by this bossy, meddlesome old maid, until Anna, his wife and always a local girl herself, had convinced him that the trick was to give Velma Lettie her full name, the way old Albert had done on the rare occasions he had addressed his daughters. It froze her long enough to get something said, “You saw the sign, Bea? Thank you for the warning.”

“Sign? What sign?” The Devil, Velma knew, used sign language. She had always avoided black cats and the deaf, and although she kept familiar with the zodiac on a daily schedule, convinced it was the only safe way to keep ahead of Satan’s doings, she was never sure where she was nowadays, what with this sign business quite out of hand, this silliness over magic crystals, for instance. Not a good solid gypsy ball that you could actually see something in, certainly nothing nice in a pinwheel pattern, just silly chips and chunks, dust-catchers supposed to cure cancer and part the Red Sea. And all this foolish dreaming and meaning and therapy and confronting a black weasel in a mound of new snow had nothing… Velma felt uncomfortably warm, she’d have to speak again to old Fooks about wasting the church’s oil… nothing to do whatsoever with anything! People who dream are no better than they should be, “Sign? What sign?”

“The buffleheads are congregating south of the bridge!” Vera felt called upon to say something. After all, it’s what people expect, a bit of conversation after service, everyone having a word with the minister and something polite with friends, nods for acquaintances; they do it in books. Vera thought it’d be lovely to go home to scads of tea and hot muffins and three different kinds of sandwiches and maybe a nice cake, an angelfood, instead of brown bread and pickles and a half pot, one bag. “Sign of an early winter, the ducks.”

The others let it pass, as they mostly did with Vera. Velma would get her for it later, they knew that, but it was considered safer to ignore Vera for her own sake, she mightn’t get tea at all.

“The letter board, Velma Lettie,” the Reverend indicated the church lawn with a wave of surplice, “I hadn’t made the day of our Supper clear, and Beatrice noticed that we might have been expected to feed the southern hordes tonight, and suggested that I clarify the date of our fête.”

“You should’ve called a committee. I’m always willing to see things done correctly.” Velma clapped her bible with a capable hand.

“Of course, Velma, but we seem to have managed,” Bea was modest, “Reverend Ross added next Sunday’s date, and that should prevent any confusion.”

“Confusion to the enemy, the filthy Sassenach!” Vera’s eyes winked a rapid dozen while she quivered a smile, “Southern hordes, you see, literary allusion, historical, really… Scotland the Brave and…” She would certainly go without tea now.

Straight to her room, Velma thought, the moment we get home. “How fortunate of you to be so… noticing, Beatrice. Although, I do believe that the best of our visitors, our summer-home people, are familiar with our local celebrations, and certainly those of my circle have all taken tickets and can be counted on to know what day it is, old families, people with calendars in their lovely homes, Beatrice.”

Bob Ross had chosen the ministry, in part, for the clothes. He’d once seen himself a bishop, indeed, had indulged himself in a chain of serendipidy that sat him in full fig on the Canturbury throne. But he developed early trouble with whisky and golf, loving the former, hating the latter, an imbalance of passions unfavourable to a political churchman. So, he’d turned his back on the lure of the see for the life of the country parson, and having been posted to the rim of civilization, had found himself watering the vestry wine and went native, marrying Anna McGee of the Strawbridge Hardware McGees. This was in the days before the coming of the Canadian Tire thrust that family into a scramble of rapacity and greed from which it emerged as the ‘Grocery McGees, them bastards’.

He made do for the most part on visiting sherries, and sought comfort in corduroy and tragic sopranos. A good man who tried not to judge what he didn’t understand, he was an intelligent man who had come to believe in instinct, and so adopted a dotty Church of England manner that predated any involvement with guitars. It allowed him a moral tone and enough pedantry to employ the proper parables which were, really, sufficiently instructive and saved him the humiliation of the modern homily. Leaning on the Good Samaritan, he sensibly avoided the Marriage at Cana, deeming notice of compassion more important than of water being wine.

A weaker man would have gone High Church, slipping into cassocks and the naming of saints’ days, at least for the comings and goings of seasons, offering an all-day liturgy to those with a tooth for God. However, Bob Ross enjoyed sitting to his sermons, the thinking and the crafting of them, much more than standing and delivering. The reading, the writing, the choosing of music to frame the service managed, with a measured beat of heart, to dull and make safe the sharp edge of his vision. For he too often saw the world as transparent, vein and sinew, and the urge to blood, to sacrifice, and to read the truth in entrails for the sake of a terminally confused humanity made him thirsty.

Bea considered the Reverend Robert Ross an affable man. His manner was careful, a touch donnish, perhaps, giving him the air of a bachelor cleric soaked in Greek, his household sketchily managed by an adoring plain sister. When in fact he was indolent, given to crosswords and canasta, and married to a nervous plain wife. Bea enjoyed his company because he was a sensible man and not unhandsome.

For his part, Bob Ross trusted Bea McAlpine to never have need to confess any sort of unmanageable sin; she would neither pat him on the knee, nor abet bloody intrigue. She was kind to Anna, his wife, and a dab hand at cards. Once in every month Reverend Ross found reason to forgo Sunday evening service, giving himself peace and preventing high-church addiction in the congregation, and this evening would be particularly celebratory as it was Anna’s fruit cake night.

Pinched at birth, Anna Ross tended to hold her elbows safely cupped in her hands. Asthmatic, and morbid about cats, she lived with mice and a dust cloth. Anna’s single indulgence was an annual preparation of six fruit cakes, twice three, or three twices, no one asked, created with a generosity of sweet nuts and rum and a joyous, heated intensity expressed at no other time of the year.

A bottle of brown sherry had already been ripened into the cheesecloth wombs, tonight was the wrapping of the rum-soaked shrouds. The possibility of a chance at Anna’s bottle, especially if Bea were to drop by, was making the Reverend anxious to be rid of the Letties for fear Bea should maneuver through Velma’s blockade; if she escaped uninvited, there’d be no rum for the sailor. “Vera Lettie, could I call upon your great good nature to slip up to the vestry and just see that Jack Wilson’s stowed the collection properly, snecked the lock on my cupboard, he might’ve muddled the chore, if he’s a bit unwell.” A scrape of guilt for sacrificing a friend’s reputation was salved by a certainty that Velma couldn’t resist supervision of her sister botching a job. And indeed, saluting the assembly good day and issuing commands, Velma stood about and sailed back the aisle, Vera in her wake, to preserve the Church from thieves and secret drinkers.

Bea said she’d be glad to drop by spontaneously around seven, “If we sit in at her kitchen table, maybe we can get Anna away from her cakes long enough to take a hand at the deck, and if she wipes us out, she might be in the mood to grant you a cup of her rum to make us up a bowl of punch.” And there might be a chance for a word of advice, if she could ask it right; she didn’t want to risk her place in consecrated ground, it was already paid for.

The feather tick flat to the rug beneath him, legs tangled in a twist of blankets, George woke only a little stiff in the shoulders. Where the hell… Oh. Why the hell did I sleep here, instead of making up my bed? Never even thought about it, just did. Unhuh, but why? Change is as good as a… Yah, yah, sure. Some kind of punishment? Bed of nails? For what, besides it wasn’t… For beating your wife. I didn’t beat her, I spanked her, and it wasn’t any bed of nails, quite comfortable really, warm. Yes, but… It just seemed natural, okay? What? The spanking , or sleeping on the… Oh, for chrisake, just get up and get on with it.

Wrapping himself in a blanket, he poked up the ashes in the stove, adding kindling and poplar, found coffee and the old tin percolator which he filled and set to boil. At the bottom of the boot box he found a forgotten pair of deerskin moccasins, black and yellow as an old bruise, that stretched to a snug fit on his sock feet. Hitching his blanket into a shawl, he shuffled out the back pantry door for a leak, then into the big woodshed, mindful of porcupines who had a tendency as the year cooled to wander in for a look at the woodpile, and loaded an armful of stovewood. Carrying in the third or fourth load, he noticed that such a lot of wood rather suggested that he hadn’t been thinking about going home. He dropped his shawl and carried two more loads keeping his mind on the damp path under his moccs, cautioning himself not to track mud and to remember to dry his feet at the stove.

Filling his tin mug with boiling black coffee, gently standing one foot at a time on the open oven door, he considered the moment, sipped away a half inch of coffee and added a dollop of scotch. He picked up the blanket, decided against it, and with a squaring of shoulders marched his mug out back past the woodshed along an overgrown trail and up into a thicket of plum masking an old outhouse that only he cared to use. With the door gaping wide, he sat in his thicket, stared out at far water through a tracery of grey twigs and searched himself for understanding.

There was no thought of leaving Elizabeth, of course. Well, he had fled the house for the cottage and he was willing to think about how long he dared stay, now that the wood was in, but leaving, meaning separation or divorce, wasn’t a possible consideration. He had married her on a dare: she had dared to set her cap and offer herself; he had dared to abandon a determined bachelorhood and accept her offer and he had grown a comfortable affection for her unbridled egoism. In fact, I suppose after all these years, he thought, it must be love. Or is it habit?

Without warning, in the split of a moment, George blazed with such fury, such a trembling anger, that he was forced to rest his mug on the wooden seat or spill it into the crotch of the pants between his knees. Suddenly furious with his wife in a way he’d never been, he was at first shocked and then afraid for his own safety. Dizzy with unexpected passion, he imagined this blind white heat to be the same killing hate he had known so briefly and so long when he had thrown his fragile fighter high at the murderous enemy who was destroying his friends in the air. It was death we all hated. We knew they were like us, a barely different silhouette, and like us addicted to the cold brass balls of the ride. They tired the same muscles and cried into their drinks just as we did. It was death we all hated, and love not returning. And this is what I think of now, thinking of Elizabeth?

The trembling having ebbed to a slight numbness in his fingertips, George reached and took a long swallow from his mug. I suppose that tin perc’s really aluminium and I’ve been leaching madness into my coffee all these years. It’s the parting, isn’t it? God, you’re childish! Parting with Elizabeth… Puerile! What a leap, separation is death and Elizabeth’s the enemy. Freud, balls! Second childhood. Maybe it’s the water. You can’t leave her just because she’s finally flipped her lid, been cruel and foolish, a humiliation. I flipped too and spanked her. I wasn’t hating her. No, but you were angry. Yes, because she wouldn’t stop. She’s just been flying on and on, on her own, firing and firing. She had to be stopped. He heaved his lungs and wiped a hand the length of his face. Christ Almighty, I’m tired. Resting his head in the hand, he resisted thinking as long as he could, then swallowed the rest of the coffee.

Just the kitchen, if I kept the kitchen warm, closed off the rest, there’s enough stovewood in the shed. Come freeze-up, punch a hole in the ice, dip a pail. What the hell, get some supplies in. I could drop the cruiser back in the water, run downriver instead of suffering that dickhead at the marina. Used to be a good outfitter in Strawbridge. Y’ can’t do it. I can. You can’t, it’s insane, you’ve too much responsibility. Exactly. One call to Darla, she can pull the plug for me, take me off life support. Bullshit, they’d never let you, the Boards you’re on… They’d have to shoot you. Fuck ‘em! It’s not as if they can fire me. Sue me, maybe, say I’m dead, declare me missing in action, crashed, plug pulled, gone away, gone home.

George reached for an old polished birch twig hanging from a nail by a loop of twine and cleaned himself. I can hole up here if I fucking well want and they can all go suck eggs! Reslipping his braces, he gave the outhouse a quick inspection, noted a need for pruning the view, loped down to set the kitchen to rights, hung his bedding out to sun, shook down the stove, swept out his tracking in. The work made him peckish and the coffee was splashing up acid in his belly. He found some waxy biscuits and nibbled a few while he poked in the pantry for tins. Nothing appealed. I’ll have to drop down for supplies right smart. You can’t run the cruiser without a good soak first! Drop her in, she’s still wet from the summer. It’s Sunday. Shit. Sunday All Welcome. Yes! Fowl Supper. And he saw crackling gilded breast of chicken, scorched scallops thick with cream and onions, soft white rolls and too much butter, apple pie, cream pies, layer cakes and… Yes! Drop ‘er in, drop ‘er in. Doo dah, doo dah.

Down in the boathouse, George laid the old launch gently into the water, getting her feet wet, tightening her boards and for the sake of killing time he greased tracks and winch gears, gauged the spark, rubbed brass and took a long wash in the cold lake.

“What the hell are we getting into? I knew we should’ve gone up 400 and across somehow. I don’t know this road.” Sweat leaking from Katherine’s ballcap tickled past her ears and soaked into the collar of her flannel shirt. Her right hand swatted Martin in the passenger seat, “What’d that sign say? Where the hell do we turn? We’re gonna end up in downtown Peterborough if we don’t get off this soon.” Hunching over the wheel, she held the little Toyota wagon to the inside lane with her shoulders. “For chrisake, Martin, turn the damned heater down! Open your window and let some air in here, I’m roasting and it stinks. I told you no smelly stuff!”

Flashing her a look close to hatred, “You’re the one who cranked the heat on,” Martin examined the dash and slid a switch, rolled down the window with savage jerks of the handle and waved an arm into the rush of air, “That sign said ‘Ottawa’. Do we want Ottawa?”

“Jesus, you asshole! No, we don’t want Ottawa, we want highway twenty something, I think, twenty-six, twenty-eight, something like that.”

“Oh, how nice, a highway one’s own age, for a change,” Martin slid fingers down the carefully faded denim stretched to his thighs, “The ride of a lifetime,” He flicked fingers through his hair, “And the scenery’ll be fabulous.” He peered at a sign through his open window, “Now this road’s more you, isn’t it?”

“What?” Absorbed in the signs – Ottawa, No.7 East. No! Emily. Who the hell’s Emily? Port Hope, South. Not a hope. No, she wanted something North. Peterborough, A Special Place, 5 kilometers. Shit!

Martin watched her hands, “I mean, this road’s a hundred and fifteen, and boring,” prepared to duck if necessary.

“One fifteen, Martin, it’s called the one fifteen,” Annoyed with the road, she’d missed his meanness, “Parkway! That’ll be it, eh? A parkway’s a bypass, right? That’s what we want,” Turning her head with the first smile she’d managed since they started out of Toronto, she meant to be instructive, “Like the four-oh-one, Martin, you don’t call it the four hundred and one,” But some peripheral ear had noticed style perhaps, if not content, and she suspected that sharper comment was probably in order, “You’d think you’d never been north of Bloor Street. Have you?”

“Yes, Katherine,” Hissing scorn, “We do have a family place in Haliburton. I’ve done the outdoor thing, thank you very much,” His voice deepening into a drawl of old anger, Martin jerked his shoulder safety harness taut in his fists, “My brothers were happy little participactors, fucking scouts, taught me all the woodsy crap I ever want to know. How to carry the canoe, how to carry the firewood, how to carry the water buckets, how to carry all their stuff while they tracked the bear that’d rip me to shreds if I stopped carrying everything. Oh, sure. Boneheads!

“You’ll be glad to know I even brought their precious little primus stove, which Madge dumped on me in one of her annual getitoutofmyhouse frenzies, just in case the Redneck Hilton’s all booked up and we have to boil our own sticks and berries in some snake-ridden, white-trash campground. I hope you packed a tent, Katherine, because we are not… Hear me? …we are not staying in any trailer parks. I didn’t sin at birth and I’m not spending a minute sitting in the path of doom. I wasn’t trained for it. Are you listening? No trailer parks, no sleeping with cousins, no line-dancing. Clear?”

“Line-dancing?” Katherine had successfully scooted her wagon across three lanes of traffic into a slipway that curled and dipped and stopped for a light. “You good at that? I didn’t know you liked country stuff. I’ve never done it, but it sorta looks like fun. Jesus, I hate delayed greens. Sure is a shitload of traffic, I hope this parkway’s eight lanes and fast, I’m going to need a pee stop at the other end.” She punched the gears up through the intersection and pulled back into high, only to be braked into a hunch by narrowing lanes.

“Son of a bitch!” She thumped the wheel, “Something doesn’t look right about this,” She stretched her neck, kneaded it with rigid fingers and frowned at the residential streets, the trees and corner stores, “Maybe we’ll find a barroom floor up in Manooth and you can teach me the Roadkill Stomp, or something. Those heifer-hips on TV can do it, so can I. It’s just browsing in circles, they do it all day at the mall. I’m not surprised you’re good at it. Are you? Shit! This’s the fucking commercial district! The bastards, the lying bastards!”

Locked into a suddenly narrow stream of traffic, her boots pumping pedals, Katherine hunkered over the wheel, steering with a forearm, cranking through gears, her fingers scrabbling through pockets, the dash shelf, between seats, to hand herself wads of Kleenex, a honey cough drop, nose spray, and more Kleenex, an eyeliner she hadn’t seen for months and pocketed, a handiwipe to get the cough drop off her fingers and the bug guts off the centre of the windshield, another Kleenex, a cigarette, a lighter, a lighter, a light… “Where the hell’s that damned lighter? Gimme it, you little thief!” And she smacked Martin’s shoulder, missed a shift and stalled on a light.

“Look what you did now,” It came out puckered around the unlit cigarette which she waggled at Martin as she reached to the ignition, “Light me.”

Snapping her lighter to the tip and watching her hands and feet slap the machinery into motion, Martin thought Katherine had an interesting relationship with mechanics, she was the sensitive one. “You know, Katherine, you go through a gear box the way you go through people. D’ you ever notice that?”

“What, so I’m a bad person?” She gave Martin a raised eyebrow and a wry twist of her cigarette, “Look, we gotta make a stop. Okay? I have to. I have to pee. And I need something.”

“To drink?” Martin was arch, but he felt the need himself, “A nice cocktail?”

“No, I was thinking of…” She dug a couple of fingers into the centre of her brow, “Oh, well, a drink… But I need a dose of carbos, have to remember to feed the body as well as the spirit. Find us a place, Mart, no doughnut shops, and no pita crap, a café, or something. You watch your side. A drink and a french fry.”

Paul had quit Toronto, taken the late Saturday bus north, all the way home to Bannock. “Back in the Bun, then, Paul lad?” Bannock, the unleavened loaf, not sacred, just flat, hardtack, a place to dry your feet between the bog and the hill. “Stayin’ back at your Mom’s, then, are ya?” Bannock, pinched white and mean, mugged for a seam of cankered rock and trash trees, stood in the street and welcomed him back, “The city too big for ya, was it?”

A rednecked pecker of a town, Paul thought, my town, my people. He shivered and balled his fists, out on a run for cigarettes, his mother safely in church, he hadn’t dressed for conversation, “Tell you the truth, I couldn’t stand the stink and the noise anymore.”

“Well. Yah, I guess, eh? I hear it’s pretty bad, all the punks and the drugs and the fags. You do any big ones, then?”

Paul felt the blood rush high in his nose, tasted iron. The town knew, or thought it knew, what he did for sex; he’d always been discreet, more or less, but he wasn’t shy. Even so, it wasn’t usual for the town to ask. Unless it had a personal interest? Paul slid a cautious eye down to half-laced Kodiaks and back up the middle past a pouch of denim to a narrow chest and chin, sharp cheeks and a long smooth cap of yellow hair. The shag lives, he thought, skinky, but the eyes are wide enough to see past the nose. Maybe. Youth. Maybe. Times have changed. Maybe. Could do worse on a cold day. Done worse on a hot day. “Do what?”

“Drugs! City drugs,” Snorted in exasperation. and followed with a wry slow smile, “You twisted old lad.”

So, change at its petty pace, eh? Paul’s shoulders dropped. Not all rock and roll, but better than getting slapped about the head and called a faggot. His hands went to his jacket pockets for a rest, “Oh, sure, there’s great dope, pharmaceutical city, streets’re full of chemicals. Hell, the air’s full of chemicals, water’s full of chemicals, might as well do cocktails, go shopping and give everybody money. Buy your high, purple silks and the wine of Corinth, tits and ass on point, beer with ball and bad acoustics; it’s all drugs, Old Sailor on a bench in Allen Gardens, old scotch on the bench in wig and gown, choose your habit, but don’t spit on the sidewalk, eh, it’s a world-class city!”

“Whoa, Nelly, sounds like you got a bit burnt there.”

“Well, it wasn’t the drugs, but it might have been the attitude.” There was something about the yellow shag… “You’re Marcy Fell’s brother, aren’t you?”

Shy pleasure opened the focus of the wide enough eyes.

“I thought so, you’ve got the same hair. Marcy could sit on hers in highschool. She and I used to skip and hitch rides down to Belleville together, do the malls.”

“Good old Mars, eh. She’s livin’ in Ottawa, doin’ somethin’ for the government.” Said with pride and skepticism.

“Good for her. She always wanted out. She married yet?”

“Nah, she’s got a guy she lives with, shares this neat place like, but he’s hardly ever there, goes all over the place, Germany, Africa, the States, all over. He’s even been to Colombia, eh? No souvenirs, though. Mars calls him the attaché case, does foreign aid, or something, gives all our money to the spear-chuckers most likely, fuckin’ government. He’s all right, though, played Junior B for St. Catherines. I was over once to see Mars and he was there, me and him went over the river for a few Cinquantes, he’s really got his dick up for Mars, but she’s hardly ever there, either, all over the country, down to the States doin’ speeches and meetings and stuff. Carryin’ the club, she says, for humane trapping. You know? Tryin’ to keep the Red Brethern from starvin’ to death before they can get a couple casinos, or an oil well, or somethin’ up and runnin’ to help pay for the feathers, she says. Tryin’ to show ‘em how to milk the wild rice and the whatd’y’callit oil the way the Mennonites and the maple syrup guys do, little gingham hats on things, that kinda shit. Not what she’s supposed to be doin’, gettin’ them to stop with the legholds, but Mars thinks they can get the fur trade turned around with one of these ethnic culture scams. You know, spread around some fur hats and blankets to the politicians, do some big dress-up dances, canoe trips for the Tilley hats; get ‘er rollin’ and the tourists’ll be payin’ big bucks for it and everybody gets a piece. Trouble is, Mars says, is gettin’ the pricks who really want the fur bedspreads to cough up real money for the Injuns so they can get decent enough to make it look like a free-trade deal, instead of a rip-off.”

Marcy’s little brother. Jesus! That day Marcy and I got stuck with him out at the lake, he must’ve been about fourteen, had on a little blue Speedo and a whonking big basket… Yah, and he was supposed to be on sex drugs, or something weird, and nobody knew if he could get a hard… “Hard to believe it’s been so long, eh? You know, I’m sorry, but I’ve forgotten, what’s your name?”

“Little Brat Fell, stuff him in the well, nobody wants him, we won’t tell!”

Paul erupted in laughing surprise, “Brad! Oh, god, I remember! Little Brat Fell. We were mean little fuckers, weren’t we?”

“Mars always said you said it was your first poem.”

“My first poem, I said that? Oh, I was a pretentious little asshole. Probably thought I was Eliot already. Yuck! Thought I was Pope in highschool, the bent little poet, not the big bent priest. Pope’s good for puberty, everybody’s a bit out of shape with their hands in their pants, that’s why they do him in school.” Paul felt another wave of blood rising and fought to change the subject, “How old are you now, anyway?”

“Twenty-six.”

“Soooo… five years, eh…” Infancy should be safe, “We must’ve been eight, nine, you’d’ve been about three, trying to follow us everywhere and beat up our knees. You were dangerous. You wouldn’t even watch tv. You know, I was probably Mister Rogers, or Finnigan, at that age, not Pope. Might’ve been Vivian Vance. If you’re twenty-six, where’s the wife and kids and the pickup with the gunrack? And the dog? I didn’t think they let you stay in town after highschool unless you bought the kit.” Paul answered a still raised eyebrow, “Ethel Mertz, Viv…”

“Oh, yah! I knew it rang a bell, eh. She still alive?”

“I think. How’s your mother, by the way? Lucy’s dead, though.”

“All right. Yah, too bad. Probably just as well though, she was lookin’ pretty much like a clubbed seal there for the last while. Lucy, I mean. D’ you ever see that Mame, or whatever, movie she did?”

“With Bea Arthur in a bale of brown velvet…”

“Yah! And the hunt scene? All your horses and riders goin’ back and forth and back and forth and back and forth over the fences like a chorus line couldn’t stop… Wow! I always thought that’s one of the funniest things… Good as the ‘Sing a nigger song’ bit in… what d’ y’ callit, …Saddles.”

“Blazing Saddles.” His head bobbing, Paul thought he couldn’t believe his ears and thought what a cliché that was. Of course, it’s a cliché because it’s actually happening, Pollywog, you’re pretending not to believe your ears because your heat just went to boil. Pulling his hands from his jacket, he shoved them deep in his jeans. You mean high blood pressure is distorting your aural percep… Your oral perceptions are distorting your… Never mind! He’s bright, he knows what’s funny. Bannock lives! Breathe. God, I hope my fly’s done up. Breathe. Through your nose! Don’t drool, keep your mouth shut, you can’t ask him if he wants… “I get no kicks from champagne, pure alcohol doesn’t… You mean that scene? …I get my kicks out of you.”

“Yup, one of the best ever. Tough guys blown away with perfect harmony, that’s righteous for sure.” Head ducking to hide a blush, Brad chipped a Kodiak at the sidewalk, “I do some keyboards at the Arlen weekends, me and two other guys, ‘Hickey Flats’, you know, ‘cause of the place and ‘cause we don’t practice enough.” The blush ripened, but his face turned up with a spreading grin, “Dewey Tait’s on drums and Little Rob’s got an old electric slide looks like a kitchen table, you know, all chrome and that Elvis plastic. Played back for John Fort last year. ‘Member him, with the fiddle? Learned some good tunes, but his bow’s always in your face. Know what I mean? Women like it. My mom’s not doin’ bad. I’m not buyin’ the married kit yet ‘cause y’ have to spend all your time at Canadian Tire just to keep it on the road. Y’ know Old Bruce chugged his last brew, eh?”

“Your dad. I heard. She get over that okay?”

“Ah, he was such an old boozer, eh, I think she’s glad she doesn’t have to think about him drivin’ home from the Legion without puttin’ the car in the river anymore. She got to re-do the house, anyway. I kept his stuffed fish. You oughta see some of those suckers, man, I’ve got a muskie hangin’ over my bed must be that long!” Studying the length held in his hands, Brad failed to notice the sudden break of sweat at Paul’s hairline. “Mars’s got all his old spring traps and stretchers and stuff hangin’ all over her walls. Weird, eh?”

“Might explain the traveling boyfriend.”

“Hah! Could do. Mars says it’s to remind her she’s Old Bruce’s daughter. Don’t know what she needs reminding for. She drinks those spritzers. Me, I still do beer.”

Paul’s fists clenched in his jeans and he turned in small pivots on his heels, “D’ you want to go for a drink somewhere?”

“It’s Sunday,” Brad pointed his chin down the block at a clumsy brick bulk, “They’re all in there. You still got that old humpback Ovation you used to play at church things?”

Arching his back to a goose-run down his spine, Paul’s buttocks rose and blood flowed in his groin. Fuck! Not likely. Not here. Calm down. Except for the heathen running the Quicky and the boys in clean shirts pumping gas at the corner, business sat in Chapel hawking morality and spitting on sin. “You remember that, eh?” Hanging over his bed, eh? “You believe I was idiot enough to give that guitar away? Somebody I thought… Stupid! She looked so much like Joni, teeth and all, I thought she could play. She went and married a real bozo, lives in Etobicoke, god knows where the guitar is. She’s probably got braces in her mouth. Hope she snags the wire on Bozo’s dick. Jesus! I sure could use a… coffee, anyway.”

“Hey!” An idea lit Brad’s face, “You know Salmon, old Crustless Sam…”

“Sammie the Leaping Salmon? Ohhh, yes. He in the pen yet?”

“Nah, he’s got a place out the Mill bridge, just off the highway, on the river, but down a bit. Used to be a boat shed there, but he got all hippie-crafty with one of those leather aprons for his hammer and stuff. I say he did a B and E on the Cashway, place looks like a blown-up beaver lodge, dangerous as all hell. He’s not even supposed to be livin’ there, but the Reeve’s got his mitts on most of Sam’s side, and his brother-in-law’s got the other bank, so they figure Sam’s spooky enough to keep major assholes out of their private fishin’ hole. And that fucker Salmon’s got ‘em convinced he hates eatin’ fish ‘cause of his name. Pretty wicked.” Brad shook his head with a wide, sweet grin, “Anyway, Sam’s always got coffee on.” His pause was a question. “This side of the bridge, just in to the right there.”

“Sammy at the Bridge, eh? Holding his sword in both hands like always?”

“No, Sam’s got cool now. Says he raised his stick in every bar and every woman from Belleville up to the Park, and he never mis-cued once, so it was time to retire the champ. He says things like that. You believe he says things like that?”

“Oh, yah. Sammy’s his own legend. Canned Salmon. Nobody else’s gonna come up with that much bullshit. Always figured he had to play Geronimo to keep the bad boys out of his hair. Not necessarily the swiftest move, but he sure got laid a lot.” Paul looked down to the Kodiaks and back up, “You buddies?”

Brad couldn’t help the guilty blush, “Yah. Kind of. Just like when we were kids, I’m supposed to be grateful and do whatever he says. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. Depends.” He shrugged, “Gotta make your own fun around here. You wanta go out to the Bridge, have a coffee?”

“Go visit the Troll? You driving?”

George hesitated at the closet. What to wear to supper in the village church, doo dah, doo dah. The off-duty khakis he’d worn on the ride up smelled like an old man and a pale spot of boat gas marked one knee. And he didn’t keep a banker’s broadcloth at the lake, power suiting too easily could offend. It wasn’t unknown for couturiers to be lumped with taxgatherers and thieves. An elder in his own church, George remembered only too well the ecclesiastical Hat Wars of the fifties that had ended with a church on its knees in prayer, head uncovered except for the dressy sacraments of baptism, matrimony and interment.

The first sign of Armageddon, in the eyes of the church ladies and not a few husbands, had been unhatted females in the Sunday congregations. Auxiliaries rose in arms. Presidents resigned. Institutes verged on collapse. Deacons went into hiding. Sees and synods trembled. And ministers of God were forced to lock vestry doors. Then Missus Kennedy took to the little pill-box hat. Her triumph and tragedy distracted the combatants and by the time she sailed away with her Greek, the significance of hats had sailed with her. Of course, Elizabeth had been in the thick of the fight defending hats like a Stuart royalist, and the cause being abandoned to the course of history, she boxed her hats and hid them in a cupboard, to await the word out of France.

George had rather thought at the time that another Greek, the Metropolitan Makarios, whose orthodox headdress made the rest look silly, had helped seal the issue. Who could compete with veiled black? But he decided for himself that dumpy would be safe church supper wear, clean corduroys and a hard old blazer of blackthorn twist. A highball would nicely take the edge off his dullness, with a gargle after, but he feared it might flush up last night’s soaking to the surface to ooze stale from his pores, and the camphor in the tweed was whiffy enough.

Carl Cameron slammed the big fridge door, growled at the waitress and drank himself a beer. The day’d gone bad, he could taste it, like the beer, he thought. Wouldn’t ya just know the Mexicans’d make a beer that tastes like it sat in a snowbank a couple days, that half-frozen sunshine skunk flavour, weasel piss, memories of a country boy. He reached above the cash register and cranked an old George Jones coming up on the tape. The waitress’s eyes slitted.

Carl had opened up, prepped and cooked his way to the end of his shift. Not! Carl was going to be cooking, cleaning and closing his partner’s shift because she’d been having so much fun lately she’d gotten sick and was home in bed with bad flu. Carl wasn’t even going to get a break. He thought, as he gave George another boot, that if anybody walks through that door right now, I’m gonna drink another beer.

Katherine was busy knowing where her keys were and that the car was locked and which direction they’d left it and hoping that Martin didn’t expect her to pay for him and that he probably did since this trip was her idea, so that she was close to standing on Carl’s feet by the time she noticed where she was, “D’ you do french fries?” Carl’s smile was evil as he held her eyes, slid the door of the fridge and reached himself another jar of weasel piss; he liked to cook and he dearly loved a victim.

Martin knew he’d made a mistake, picked the most godawful loser joint in the whole of Peterborough, there wasn’t a potted pasta tied with a ribbon in the place, nothing was pink. Katherine was talking to some greasy sailor in much too tight a teeshirt. There were pictures all over the walls and they weren’t even framed. The man’s apron is filthy! Oh god, Elvis shit! Aesthetically bruised, Martin winced at the waitress bussing a booth, “Do you have cocktails?”

Her eyes had almost closed with the pain of George Jones, but she could spot an asshole from a coma, “Do I have cock tales?” She jerked a thumb at Carl swilling beer, his eyes locked to the pushy bitch, “There’s one peckerhead story for you. I’ll bet you’ve got one of your own. No liquor. Wine or beer. Sit.” She waved a flat hand at the back booth, “But not there. I’ll get you an ashtray. You are with her, aren’t you?” At Martin’s nod, she rolled her eyes open and turned, “She needs a drink. I’ll ask her what you’re having. Sit.”

Carl was too busy slicing up potatoes to stop when George Jones moaned to the end, giving the waitress just time enough to pluck tape and slap Dusty Springfield into sound, before Carl could get his mouth open far enough to tell her what to play next. As often as possible she beat him to the choice, because the anguish of his choices was more than she could bear. Every choice for him was painful, fear-ridden and desperate, forever an act of abandoning, a bailout, a leaving unexpected, a going into dark. It was like road-show Brando, it left her breathless and feeling not a little greasy.

She poured bitter cold wine into a carafe, one elbow cocked to the open fridge door grounding her in its chill breath, one ear cocked for the beginning growl of Carl’s distress. It really was time she moved on, got the hell out of this one-nag burg, she’d chewed the juice, the only flavour left was concrete, she startled no one. Time for a legitimate hobby, she needed a role with a bit of dignity attached because she doubted she was going to get any tidier, or refuse a sociable drink.

She grabbed glasses out of Carl’s view, figuring that, targetless, given time to refocus, he might slip into Dusty and do his own ‘Son of a Preacherman’. It could happen. You couldn’t get a Jeannie C. past him, but he’d do Peggy Lee if he was feeling sexy. Placing carafe and glasses, she plucked an ashtray from another table to set within easy reach, expecting to empty it a time or two before these two sucked air again. Hand on hip, she stood by to see if they could manage for themselves. An awful rummaging and shifting about took place, a production of Kleenex and lighters and cigarette packs, a tube of 222’s, a shedding of road dust, so she retrieved the carafe and poured the glasses full.

She knew it was time to go. Reaching full length, she plucked menus from behind the napkin box, offered them like aces to the punters and considered her duty done.

“Son of a gunnn of a preacherman!” Deeply twisted into a moan, Carl mouthed a soup ladle and shimmied his butt in a series of bumps to the oven door, “…preacherman… son of a… What the… Hey! What the fuck’re you doin’?”

He had watched without registering as the waitress unknotted the strings of her long white apron, wadded and tossed it at the laundry bag, as she picked and pocketed a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from the shelf over the sinks, as she held him for one long moment in her eyes, then turning, snapped Dusty from the tape machine saying, “She’s too hard to find, otherwise I’d leave her for you.” She realized he needed a cue, the ladle was still at his lips, “I’ve just quit, Carl. You can handle those two out there and it’s not going to get any busier… so… I haven’t done anything to cash out on and… I guess…” She screwed her mouth in thought, “It’s only two days pay… You can send it, I’ll let you know.” And she slid in quick strides to the coatrack by the door. One arm in a sleeve, she looked to the pair still flapping between gulps of wine in the booth, hollered, “Ordering!” and when Carl’s mystified frown loomed in the gap above the cash register, she slipped the other sleeve, shrugged and waved, “Have a good life, Carl!”

She walked! That bitch just walked! Carl rattled his head, then swivelling his eyes from wall to wall, he blinked a reality check to make sure he was where he thought he was, raised both arms at his sides to assure the third dimension, slid the fridge door and reached for his cigarettes. A drag and a drink, weasel piss and coffin nails. Sounds like a banjo tune. He threw his head back for a wail, “I suck weasel piss and coffin nails, baa-by! Doo ah.”

Legs spradled, Carl stood in a sweat-stained undershirt, split-knee jeans with a busted fly wrapped in a grease-stiff apron, ankles showing pink over filthy sneakers. He stank of garlic and skunk and nicotine, a blackened elastoplast rotted on a slashed thumb as he ran his cigarette hand over his bronze pompadour. His waitress had just given him the finger. That cunt! ‘Course it’ll be all my fault. I need a bath. He sucked on his beer, “Weasel piss and coffin nails will kill ya, baaaa-by!” Hey, I can handle it.

He swaggered to the booth, “So, what’d youse like with yer fries, eh? I can do ya real grease burgers, oozing with cheddar and mozzerella, mess of fried onions, dripping with my own creamy sauce, kinda cheesy on the tongue… Or,” His eyebrows rose and his lips pursed in contemplation, “sigh, I could do you nachos with… you know…” He threw down his hand, “nacho stuff on ‘em.” He stretched his jaw and scratched his belly in fake approval, “Yuppie.”

He examined the woman’s mask, which is what he saw, a mask of smooth oiled parchment drawn tight over some possibly quite interesting neuroses. Carl saw people clearly, he believed, and the transparency of their guile shocked him, who believed himself to be innocent in full view, and it explained the numbers of beers, the whisky shots, which helped to blur the depths of shallowness and tune his wired nerve to the seriously distraught. Takes one to know one, “D’ you think you could manage a bit of crispy bacon on your burger?” Carl turned his eyes but not his head, “You look like you could use a piece of meat, too.” Fussy little faggot, he thought, does a much talked about cheesecake, kiwi cream in lime puddle. Irons his socks. “You up for bacon, too? I got a length of sausage might interest ya.”

Martin was almost positive he was mortified. This greaseball was beating on his manhood! Maybe. Almost certainly there was innuendo in this hick performance. Where does this yahoo get off questioning something he knows nothing about, or is that just the way they talk? Insolence from wait-persons might be an accepted standard, but that’s because they’re better, of course, than their jobs, not worse. “What is it, a local thing, to keep beef between your ears, Popeye?”

Katherine was alert now, any show of seduction, clash of antlers, was welcome, but Martin in a snit was to be avoided. She placed a gentling hand on his wrist, “Cool it, Martin, take a deep breath, we all know you’re a good person. You don’t have to eat anything you don’t want. He does make it sound kind of sexy, though, doesn’t he?” She patted the wrist, “This’s on me.”

Martin wanted to kill her then; she was willing to pay for his humiliation, how nice. Maybe he didn’t mean it that way, maybe I just look hungry. Why does she think he means anything? Because she’s got a dirty mind! So, what did he mean? Oh, dear… Suddenly flustered beyond understanding, “Where’s your washroom? Excuse me, I…” Half out of the booth, Martin made a swipe for his wine and drained it, “I’ll have whatever’s going.” He was forced to duck and weave round Carl’s elbow, on the beer side, and when Carl cocked his jaw and spoke from the side of his face, “No jerking off in the can, buddy,” Martin went cold and hot and cold and hot and worried about the doorlock and couldn’t think to pee.

Sam Salmon believed he was full-blood Indian, though a mirror was his only proof. The high Asian cheekbones, the narrow knuckle-bridged semitic nose, the dark, deep southern eyes, the thick black hair which he could plait into rope one-handed looked like Chief material to him. Found in the woodbox next the stove in the parish priest’s kitchen up in Manooth, he could have been Irish, but surely none of the local girls had been that far gone without a husband, besides, the priest would’ve known, even if he couldn’t say. Gossip figured he’d been thrown by one of the young squaws from up the lake, one of old Sam Golder’s daughters or grandaughters, or a niece, or… You’d just never know, there were so many and they never spoke. So, Sam had been delivered to the hospital in Bannock labeled, ‘Sam’, for convenience, ‘Indian’. ‘Unknown’.

Pitied by a couple of Scotch social-management types who had fled bureaucracy for the bush, he had been, after four years of perseverence and familiarity with red tape, adopted as Sam Salmon. The day his classmates snickered when the kindergarten teacher held up How Sammy Squirrel Got His Name at story time, something curiously hard set like plaster in Sam’s heart. And when he got to grade nine and Shakespeare and heard about irony, he had a word to put to the disgusting stupidity of having become a Salmon instead of a MacBeth, or a MacDuff, even a MacIntosh would do. If he’d lost the chance to be an Eaglefeather, or a Manygrayhorses, that the Salmons didn’t have a proper Scotch francise to their name was ridiculously unfair! Even MacSalmon would have done, though he later came, when everything but fried cat had been MacBunned, to appreciate that mercy.

Name-calling is a childish art and ‘Crustless’ was the creation of the highschool pep club president; she meant tidy white bread finger sandwiches and she meant to be malicious. Fresh from gym and the shower, the boys told her she was wrong, Sam had never been trimmed, but the name stuck off and on just to see her blush. Sam’s ease with girls and the obvious fact that he liked himself, if not his name, pissed off a few of the town skinks who dredged up the hoary apocrypha of tales about castration with tin lids, dirt crusted, germ ridden, rusty tin lids, and they started to holler things like, “Hey, Canned Salmon!” and “Check yer bag, boy?” It got pretty ugly till one of them fell out the back door of the Arlen on a Saturday night and came-to naked Sunday morning spread-eagled atop a beaver dam; he only remembered being carried and saw through the pain in his skull the gold flash of sun on beaver teeth.

Slumped in an old canvas sling chair rescued from the dump, popped dowels reglued and rotten canvas reinforced with a rescued macramé plant hanger, Sam lay soaking thin sun through flannel and denim to his brown skin and bones. A hand on his belly, he felt hard, lean and smug; the last of his stove wood was split and stacked in the shed; the big tank was full of propane all paid for in cash, which was the only way he could get delivery; he’d been up the pole to rehook his hydro now it was getting too cold for the boys to get out of the truck for a looksee, and the disc player he’d traded for a set of rescued truck hubs gave better tunes than his old tapedack. Sam was as happy as he ever got.

On a black night, standing next a cedar fire snapping into stars, with enough liquor inside and a long stout pole in his hands to weight and support his dreaming, a sense of power, a feel for majesty could flood him and his braid would lie heavy on his back. Or running the coloured balls in a rhythm of clicks to a crescendo of silent fury and a collection of folded bills could bathe him in a wild feral sweat of cunning triumph. Orgasm of any kind was always a dip into a memory of ecstasy. Being ready for winter before it came, that washed Sam in the blood.

The drive to the bridge was short and furious, Brad leaping the primer gray Camaro from crest to crest of the rising landscape to drop it in a crash of gears and gravel at the foot of a cluster of towering pines. Paul withdrew his legs slowly from the nose of the car, catching his breath and giving himself time to see through the trees, to get a long look at Sam’s cabin.

The boathouse had been left a shed, the oldest of four attached in a cross to a centre square shed of greater height – twenty, twenty-four feet, he supposed, the length of the lumber – with tall windows high in its sides of cedar plank slowly silvering. A passing cloud turned the colour to stone, and with a bit of a squint Paul saw a citadel, a castle keep. The cloud moved and he could see the rubble Brad had called dangerous; teetering stacks of lumber, heaps of rusting iron and rain-hardened cement sacks, boxes of bottles, cans, nails, bundles of tarpaper, curling shingles, rotting tarps and broken barrows, everything gritty with sand and poked through with rank grass and nettles. And in a low chair convenient to a cracked and corroded stove top half sunk in the earth, Sam stretched, flicked ashes at the stove, drew on his cigarette, scratched at his groin and said, “Jesus, Paul Magarry.”

“Some wigwam, Sammy.” A judicious pursing prevented Paul’s mouth from splitting in a grin, “Brad said it looked like the highway boys shoved dynamite up a beaver house.”

“Uum. I figure if it looks bombed already maybe they’ll leave it alone. They never can tell, could be a rusty old trap or two hidin’ around just about pecker high in all this garbage. Country boys’re shy of most things with teeth. You still got your teeth, Magarry? They teach you not to bite in the big city?” This time he rubbed his groin and wagged his eyebrows.

“You’re still a pig, Sammy. I’m surprised somebody hasn’t shoved a shotgun down your jeans long ago.”

“In your dreams, Magarry. Not enough room for a second gun in my pants, now you, I hear…” He let it hang, looked over at Brad and winked.

Paul grinned at last and snorted, “You’re a real porker, Salmon, not just as cute as you used to be, but hey, still kickin’ shit.”

“Well, what’s shit anymore, eh? Sam whistled a sigh through a gap, “Gettin’ hit hurts a lot longer than it used to, and you know what it’s like around here, you have to go to church and put money in the plate if you want any real protection, so I had to figure some way to keep the yahoos out of my yard.”

“You could make yourself a bear story.”

“Oh, hell, I got one. Big black bitch of an old sow hidin’ out there in the berry bushes. Oh sure, cubs every spring. Meaner’n skunk shit, just lurkin’.”

“You’re a credit to your race, Sammy.”

The black eyes glittered, “And you’re still a prick.”

“Oh, get over it Geronimo, you know what I mean, for all you know you’re Irish. I mean, you’re doing what you’re good at.” Paul stooped for a lump of hardened Portland and bounced it on his palm, “A little creative camouflage and a bit of ball-crawling fear, keeps the cowboys on their toes.” He winged the concrete into the bush.

“Watch you don’t hit my bear, Magarry.”

Paul grinned and shook his head, “You’re a good Indian, Sammy, even if you were raised by Scrooge McDuck and Lassie.” He looked at Brad who was shifting his boots and switching hands from pockets to hips and back again, “You didn’t know we called them that, did you, the Scotch Salmons? You were too little, you’d have blabbed and we’d have gotten smacked.” Turning back to Sam, his voice went soft, “You ever see ‘em, Sammy?”

When they had first come north, the Salmons had bought up a roadside housekeeping cabin layout with a view to knotty pine and tartan for the hunting set, but they were in the wrong country at the wrong time, land was about as cheap as the weekly rate, so mostly what they got were people stopping by to ask the way to the real estate office. They held on, doing a little bootlegging to get through the winters, until Sam turned sixteen and walked out with his life in a dufflebag. They sold up then, moved back to live below the blackfly line and work for the Children’s Aid.

Paul spoke again into an old silence, “You know, they didn’t do such a bad job on you, Sambo, you got this goin’ for yourself,” He palmed the river and the cabin and the bush, “Hell of a bit more than I’ve got at the moment.”

“They didn’t want me bein’ an Indian.”

“Fuck, Sam, that was then, nobody wanted to be an Indian. Okay for kids playin’ at, but it was not cool, Sam. You know that better than anyone else, look at the shit you took. They probably thought you’d be better off.”

“They probably thought they’d be better off denyin’ my cultural heritage. They were sittin’ on Indian land, y’ know.”

“Oh sure, right on Wigwam Way. Corner of Wigwam and Birch, wasn’t it? For chrissake, Sammy, the place was built in a bog, no real Indians ever lived there!”

“It was our land, Magarry. I’d watch my mouth, if I was you, the Native Brethern’re learnin’ a thing or two about defamation an’ stuff.”

“And learning quickly to be as righteous as the Plymouth brethern. Your land is my land. How come, if you invented cigarettes and corn on the cob and baked potatoes, we don’t hear a lot about farming as one of your earth chores, eh? If you’re so handy with the sap bucket and the spruce dip, what’s with the slot machines? You…” Paul wagged a hand at Sam, “You First Nation guys… if that’s what you’re bein’… I don’t know… banks’ve got the money, government’s got the lotteries, traders’ve got the futures, they’re all makin’ billions sellin’ people chances on their own hope, and you guys pick the one-armed bandits and the card tables. I don’t know… I think you’re tradin’ for infected blankets all over again.”

“Magarry, d’ you ever know what the hell you’re talkin’ about?”

“Oh, well then, enough Cultural Studies. Though I really would like to know where those little fart-catcher hangy things come from. But seriously, Scrooge and the Lass ever been here, Sam?”

“Nope. Never see ‘em, can’t ask ‘em.”

“Oh, that’s complicated, Samo, a real puzzler. There’s therapy, you know, a little gestalt, a little hypnosis and… Poof! Happy families. Or you could just reach out and touch somebody.” Paul faked a phone to his ear.

“You’re pickin’ my nose, Magarry.” It was a warning growl.

“Fine. Fine. It’s not my business.” Paul showed his palms in a gesture of peace, “Brad here says you make good coffee. Why don’t you offer us some, and maybe you’ll feel better about yourself and stop this incessant bickering.”

“Jesus, Magarry!” Sam crushed his cigarette on the rusted stove top, “You just never quit.” He levered his long bones out of the sling, “What the hell, come on in.”

Paul smiled at Brad, “He’s always been gracious.”

Martin shook it and shook it and shook it, and then because he wasn’t any boyscout, he shook it again. Slowly and with finicking care, he retucked himself and examined the position of his hair in the square of mirror over the basin, avoiding images of a greasy roll of teeshirt ringing hot heat-pinked bicep and thick raw fingers pinching a butt to lips, and his focus slid from hairline to mouth and the bitter smile in the mirror met the one in his mind and he caught his zipper on his dick.

Banging out of the washroom, scrappy with annoyance and relief, a rather stimulating pain and no blood, hungry enough to eat whatever this yahoo served up and then get the hell out, Martin stumbled into Carl propped against the big fridge. “Got that meat on the grill yet, garçon?” Martin flagged a thumb at the kitchen opposite, “What’s the holdup? Pompadour too heavy? We’re travellin’, you know, fella. We’re truckin’ through and we got no time for roadhouse romance. Understand? So, if this’s gonna complicate your life a lot, Zeke, just point us north and we’re mounted.”

Pinching his butt to death with gnawed nails, Carl avoided crashing his beer into the head of this lame nitwit doing hardman imitations in a spotted hanky and jeans tight enough for a twelve year old girl. He rubbed out the coal of his smoke with a dirty sneaker toe, wet himself with the end of his beer and slid the bottle on top of the fridge. With one heavy, thick-fingered hand, he pinned Martin’s wrists to the wall above his head and raised a knee to his balls to discourage kicking, while the other hand gripped Martin’s jaw. Carl growled and flashed his eyes, looked hateful, looked contemptuous, pitying, lascivious, and with a slow drawn bowing of his head, pressed his lips hard to Martin’s and slid in his tongue.

A single nerve twanged from Martin’s lip to his loins, split and twanged to his toes. Plucked. Flayed. Disemboweled. Sun and air and stranger’s stare on guts exposed, and instantly the pain of tarnishing, of erosion and decay closed around the wound, and he bit on Carl’s tongue to make him withdraw.

Martin considered exploding in a hissing spit of heels and clenched nails; hard leather kicking kneecaps, clawed fingers raking fat pink flesh, crushing leaps to plant both boots a-dancing on soft body parts, balled fists pounding__ But no, the guy’s big, tall, taller, if I had my boots off. And heavier. Fifty pounds. Forty. Bullshit. Twenty, anyway, and mean, you can tell. I know the kind. Martin darted a look at Carl’s knuckles, but saw no love or hate in inked scratches. Probably don’t even have reformatories any more, just leave ‘em in the streets till they’re sent up for life. This bastard could be walking parole for rape and murder, for all anybody can tell. Actually, if you hosed him down… The hair’d have to go. Martin was quickly offensive, rubbing his wrists with great show, unsure how loud his twanging nerve had hummed, “You’re really queer, aren’t you?”

That being a response he hadn’t considered, Carl hid his confusion in a long double-take, wetting his tongue against the sting, “I musta been acting out loud. You liked it, didn’t you?”

Martin wished he had a rag and a bucket of hot soapy water to go at this wall, he could feel his shirt sticking to it, “I do not like to be mauled…” a real scrubbing, “possibly assaulted, by greasy…” you’d need Pinesol, “…smelly, strange men!” Mister Clean. “I do not loiter in public toilets, I do not…”

“Yah, yah, yah. No, my act, though, you liked my act, didn’t you?”

“That was an act?” It was Martin’s turn to hide behind a raised eyebrow and a very doubtful tone, “You’re just a lumberjack and you’re okay, is that it? Butch of the North kisses strange men by the cookhouse door, how very Jack London. And you call this an act… of what? God? Faith? Mercy?”

“Well, yah.” Carl picked at his teeth, he’d thought the little bugger just needed an excuse to go down on him, and here he was instead arguing about who’s queer. Jeez! “Look, little buddy, you’re the queer here and I was just trying to make you feel at home. You don’t have to get a hair up your ass.”

“You fucking hick! I am not your little buddy! And I’m not…”

“Hey, Marty!” Katherine’s bellow was apprehensive and warning.

“…fucking queer! And I’m not staying here another minute!” Brushing off Carl with a gesture of hands that could’ve dropped furs, Martin stalked to the booth and scooped cigarettes, jacket, a little cashmere scarf with one hand, the other on hip, all the while glaring at Katherine and darting ‘run for the door’ signals with his eyes. “We’re out of here. We’re late. We’re not hungry. Those people will be wondering where we are. Come on, Katherine, let’s go. Now.”

“Who?”

“You and I.”

“What people?”

“Who?”

“The ones who’re wondering where we are.”

Lips shrivelling with furious frustration, eyes watering with tears, Martin drew a single breath from his cowboy heels to hiss through his teeth, “Fine. You want to stay in this godforsaken greaser lounge, fine. Enjoy the floor show. Be the floor show. I know the donkey’s got it up. I’m leaving.”

Straighten it out, or go unfed. Katherine felt a weak wave of nausea, topped up her wineglass and reached for her smokes, “Sit down, Martin. I’ve got the keys.” Looking past him to Carl, “Those fries anywhere near done yet? I’m faint.” And back again, “Sit. Whatever he said, I’m sure you just got it wrong.”

“What he said? What he did!”

Katherine hadn’t actually seen what went on behind the big fridge, but she needed no more than a look at the two of them to make a guess. She knew what she’d do to make Martin squirm, if she were a man. However, “Was it good?” She patted the table edge opposite and beamed encouragement to confession.

It worked, of course, because Martin’s strong survival instinct told him to stay within reach of the car keys, and frankly, he told himself, the streets out there’ll be mean with rednecks, and all I had was a banana for breakfast, “Okay. We’ll stay to eat because you need it…” He cast his eyes at her wineglass as he slipped into the booth, “…but he is not to speak to me, he is not to come near me. You get the plates from him, we eat, and then we leave. That asshole’s dangerous. I won’t be responsible for anything that happens.”

You never are, Katherine thought, but didn’t say, and yet you’re entirely responsible every goddamned time, you little megalomaniac, always the glory but never the blame. She was quite aware that she made horrible errors in judgement of other people’s lives, cretinously stupid errors, in fact, but about Martin she had no doubt, he was the ultimate transparency, he wasn’t in a closet, he was in a baggie. She assumed that he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, admit to his sexuality because of family. The corgi-breeding mother and the tartan-weaving father sounded, from Martin’s sketchy tales, like some berserk version of the Royal Family, his brothers the good princelings who went to sea in twenty-six footers at H.M.C.S. York and married for continuity. She suspected that Martin, in his heart of hearts, still hoped it was a passing phase and he would come to be as safely insulated from himself as his father and his brothers.

“You know, you’re going to have to stop being so goddamned precious, Marty.” She knew how much he hated a hockey-stick ‘y’ on the end of his name. He wasn’t a team player.

“Don’t push me, Kate.” He figured that ought to hurt, only her runaway husband called her Kate.

“I’m serious.” She couldn’t deny duty, no matter the pain.

“So am I.” Keeping himself carefully constructed to conceal the fact that other people were a complete mystery to him, Martin wasn’t about to surrender his own rules for hers, “Don’t push.”

“What is it that you can’t handle?” I should be able to do this, Katherine thought, after all, I am a teacher.

“It’s just not something we talk about. Okay?” Martin resorted to the only advice his father had ever offered.

She was irritated by his refusal , but then again, she wasn’t getting paid for therapy. “Think the Leafs’ll take the cup?”

Martin’s lip stiffened, “You don’t have to get sarcastic, we can always talk about you. I expect you’ve got lots more things to tell me about yourself. Anything interesting?”

Her eyes rolled and riveted his through their sockets to the back of his head, “Jesus, you’re a mean little fuck. Is there anything you do like?” Something startling occured to her, “You don’t even like sex, do you?” Her own mouth hanging open in disbelief, she broke her stare before it could weaken with pity, and bellowed, “Where the hell are those fries!”

Thinks she knows everything, stunned c… Shocked mid-thought by her holler, Martin’s mind bounced and slithered to the magazines and towels beneath his bed, the runway of crystal candlesticks reflected in his bathroom mirror. I like sex. I do. It’s messy, but you don’t have to let other people see that. His fingers busily tidied the butts in the ashtray, filters stacked to the right of the ash neatly troweled. He unpinned his eyes from the back of his head and settled a sour look on Katherine. He had nothing more to say.

“Okay, fine.” Propping herself against the wall, she stretched her legs the length of the seat and topped her glass from the carafe, “We’ll talk about what I’m going to do with my life now that you’ve ruined my career.”

Martin spit back open with a dry pop, “Your career? I ruined your career? Excuzey moi, my petty cabbage, as far as I know you still have a job. Do you not? Whereas, I am on my way to the cutural breadlines. Am I not? And all because I went to so much trouble for you. Yes?”

Eyebrows disappeared into ballcap, Katherine examined him with disbelief, “Oh, you were trouble for me, no question. You got me tied to the wall of a bank, Martin, you got me tied up with that fucking woman in the first place, and then you went and picked a fight with her. D’ you really think she’d have knifed me if you hadn’t gone to all that trouble? Do you?”

“She didn’t knife you,” The sound of his own voice slipped again from memory, became words, sharp, bitter words like ‘doublecross’ and ‘chicken foot’ and ‘dragon’. No! Martin fought for distraction, “It was David Dear who stabbed you in the back, your run-away husb…” The sudden violence of her hand pinning his to the table ensured his agreement to her flat statement that they weren’t going to go there. “Well, she didn’t.”

“She did! Figuratively. Figuratively, hell! She knifed my canvas and she knifed my damned career and you’ve got a lot of nerve hitting on any cultural breadline, you little prick, you’re in advertising, for chrissake, mattress advertising.”

“Oh, I see. How crass of me.” Cold with anger, he wrenched his hand from her grip, “Your damned canvas knifed my career. I quit!”

“What?” His anger startled her, offended her, “What do you mean, quit? How do you figure that? It’s your old man’s company, you don’t even have to show up.”

“You and that woman have ruined me, for chrisake, I’ll never work in that town again!”

“Oh, take a breath, cut the dramatics. You mean Preston? You think she’s important? You know who she is, Martin?”

Popping with frustration, pressing hard into the table edge, he spit each word, “She is the Dragonlady, Katherine. She is almost the Chair of the AGO, Katherine. She went to school with my mother, Katherine. She…”

“She went to school with my mother, Martin. She’s off some farm north of Strawbridge, for godsake. She’s just another redneck gone to town. She went to school in Strawbridge, till she got a lot of money, inherited it, or something, probably killed somebody for it, then she went off to Havergal and learned to be a bitch and never went back. Well, once or twice, I guess, she must have. Bea finally spilled the beans Friday. She screwed up my mother’s relationship with my father. Gran said Bea was always such a Goody Twoshoes it finally drove her nuts. Preston, I mean. Gran too, probably. Anyway, she made up some story about Bea getting pregnant with me just so he’d have to marry her. So he did, and then he walked out. Gran says she’s just a mean nasty bitch. That’s why she did it to me. It’s got nothing to do with you.”

“Fries!” Slammed to the table between them, two heaps of dark potatoes tumescent with gravy slithered and slid from their plates.

“Stay away from me!” Lurching to a huddle in the corner of the booth, Martin cocked a knee to aim a boot heel, “Get back, you pervert.”

Carl shook his head, puckered his lips and blew a little puff of air, “Yadda, yadda, yadda. Why don’t I just put your burgers in a doggie bag and you can fuck right off out of here?” He looked to Katherine, “That be good for you? I’ll dump the fries in a box and you can get Little Buddy out of here before I bite his face off.”

“To tell you the truth,” Katherine reached for the salt, “I’d like to sit right here and eat in comfort. The burgers done? I’ll come get ‘em. Martin, sit up and eat your french fries,” Rising to follow Carl, she threw back a baleful look, “I could just leave you here.”

Martin tucked his leg back, sat up to the table in a sulk and poked at a fry, “D’you own the salt, too, or can other people use it?”

Paul saw that the shed they entered was a workshop walled the length of one side with plank shelves and benches piled with carpentry tools, a line of small-paned windows on the low side made it look, he thought, rather like a hen house, though it smelled of sweet cedar and echoed to their boots on the floor. “Where’s your firewood? You’re not heating this place with hydro, are you?”

“In the shed opposite this one, bush side. Some skink wants a beat-up Skilsaw so bad, let him have it,” Sam flipped the saw’s dangling cord onto the bench, “but he’s not gettin’ my stovewood. Shitter’s at the far end, you drop a load, you carry a load. Insulates the smell a bit, a one-holer on a pit, but there’s enough tilt that side to take it away from the river.”

Paul bent a reproachful look on Brad, “Who sold him the Harrowsmith? I suppose the bath’s heated by solar panel and the radicchio thrives in the indoor hyacinth pond?”

“Suck wind, Magarry. The hot water’s on propane and there’s a window beside the tub. Even you could find your dick. Long as the water’s not too deep.”

“Ah, Sammy, there you go again, attacking a tease with dirty words on the sidewalk. You’re so sensitive. You should put a little grease on your ball bearing.”

“You’re one mouthy piece of work for a skinny faggot, Magarry. You talkin’ Valvoline, or Vaseline?”

“I’m talking raised consciousness, enlightenment, liberation theology, charm, even, Sam. Lighten up. We’re old boys now, men even, too old to be playing this game. If you want to take it out and wave it in my face, go right ahead, but quit talking like such a prick.”

Sam turned on his heel reaching for an object to grip and found the brass handle to the inner door and sent the door flying open with a showy boot, “You want coffee.”

The centre shed was a square, a cube but for the shed slope of the ceiling, a cube not again of lumber, not planked vertically, or horizontally, or even off on a tangent, not the carpenter’s playhouse Paul had expected. Each wall had a door and above, one of the long windows he had seen from the car. His hand still on the edge of the door they had entered, a social anchor, he noticed it was cold and highly painted and it was steel. The walls looked to be of bone, not bleached bone, white and chalky, but old bone long out of the sun, healthy bone the colour of summer flesh and smooth, not the slash and slap of dry-waller’s exhaustion, but thick trowelled and softly glazed. “I’m impressed. I am absolutely amazed, Sam,” The light was strong, velvety and visible in the room. “I certainly didn’t expect this. I was figuring boy toys, all yer huntin’ and fishin’ and fuckin’ gear dumped between a pool table and a bar. I wouldn’t have thought this. She’s beautiful, Sam.”

Hand raised in a sweep of dismissal, Sam changed his mind and extended it to clasp and shake a hand, “It’s been a long time, Paul.”

Picking up a blue enamal coffee pot from the back of a woodstove, Sam flipped the lid and sniffed, “This’s a bit cooked, d’ you need it now, or wait for some fresh stuff?”

“I can wait.” Paul slid himself halfway down a long bench, planted his elbows on the plank table and rested his chin on steepled fingers, feeling quiet and undisturbed, so comfortably at home that he failed to be surprised.

He had wakened late in his old bedroom in his mother’s houseful of furniture, and rolling, cracked his elbow on a chipped birch hi-fi cabinet that still had a functioning AM band and served as a night table, and biting down on a curse, he had whimpered into a rubber pillow. Home again. He was sure that if he opened his eyes, the light falling cold and white through the window sheers onto By Grace are Ye Saved through Faith hanging on the back of the door would give him a migraine. Like pillow covers from Niagara Falls, the plaster chunks of scripture decorating his mother’s rooms had always had for him the air of souvenirs, mementos of old-fashioned wonders, but unlike pillows they gave him no comfort; he’d seen the Falls, but he didn’t know Grace. He had felt his head swelling to a pounding, he could avoid John 3:16 because it hung over his head…gave His only begotten…. Paul invariably read it as woebegotten. Home again. Up, or he’d bury himself in the bedclothes, he’d wallow in venial sin, he’d twist self-disgust into real pain and rise just at sunset wan with guilt. Thy Rod and Thy Staff Shall Comfort…. Get your hands out of your pajamas, get your feet on the floor and go have a leak and a coffee!

Sam dumped the left-over coffee into the sink, and whaling a couple strokes on a hand pump, rinsed the pot with a gush of water, then reached the glass carafe from a brewing machine that stood on the littered counter and filled it with three more crashing strokes of the pump handle. Pouring the water into the well of the machine, he turned his head to where Brad was lowering himself onto the bench opposite Paul, and with a lift of his chin said, “Do that fire before you put your ass down. Put some chunks in and open her up. I can’t be bothered bein’ cold.”

“What’s with all this half dozen of one, six of the other, Sammy, hand pump and Mister Coffee, hot bath but the sink’s not hooked up? What’s with the bush-hippie pump and the Findlay Oval next to the mod cons, you just get lazy halfway though the project?” Paul heard a gasp from Brad, but his fingers might have touched the stove.

Sam paused in his count of spooning, shrugged and scooped four more into the filter, slipped it into the machine and flicked the switch before he turned again with a look of dignity and raised eyebrows, “You know about choice, Magarry? You’ve heard about choice? These are choices, Magarry. I’m surprised you don’t recognize post-modern aesthetics when you see ‘em, thought you were the uptown guy with all the big city boy shit right there at the tip of your prick, you should know this stuff. This’s the edge, man, this’s state-of-the-art country living on the fine blade, this ain’t some hippie shack down a dirt road full of middle-aged amnesty dodgers suckin’ dope over the diaper pail, baby, this’s yer fully-functioning ecological elegance. Fuck, Suzuki’d stick a seal on this place. It’s a plan, man, place almost drives itself, but you got to be seasonal, use what you’ve got when you got it. Can’t steal hydro in the summer when the boys’re out on the lines, so I’ve got one of those little propane burners there,” He stuck a thumb at the counter, “Under those pots there, cause you don’t want to fire up that big mother in the heat. D’ you open that draught?” With a quick look at Brad, “That wood box empty?”

“Yes, sir. No, sir. Jesus! Free me, Mister Lincoln. Place almost drives itself, my ass! Who split all that…”

“Yah, yah, step into the shed and fetch us some beers while this coffee drips, punk.”

“Y’ know, there are times, Sam…” Brad’s voice was clear. He swallowed, “You shouldn’t always…”

“What I shouldn’t? You gonna make strange here in front of company?” Sam raised his eyebrows and his fist pointed a finger, “You’re nearer the beer and you’re younger than we are. Go.”

Brad slipped a grin, “Yessir,” and made across the room for the woodshed door, “On my way back.”

“Bring six, they’re small. And if you’re just takin’ a leak, for chrissake, do it outside, speakin’ of small,” Sam turned a disgusted look on Paul, “Kid’s weird, won’t piss in the bush, has to use the dumper. Some kind of pecker fixation, I guess. Kinda like you got, only he’s fixed on his own and you’re fixed on everybody else’s.”

Paul took a good long look at his friend, time enough to count to ten, took a deep breath and scratched an eyebrow, “You know, Sam, you’re the one who brings up the subject of cock every five minutes. It’s you who seems preoccupied with the subject. I don’t know, maybe it’s just your gracious social skills. Because I’m the company, we talk peckers, if I was one of the old hydro boys, we’d talk tits and ass. What the hell d’ you talk about when women are here? Sweater patterns?”

“Cunt.”

“Oh, you are a class act, Sammy, the Bannock Rotary doesn’t know what it’s missing, real presidential material. Hell, you’re smooth enough to be in Ottawa, representing the nation.” He leaned back on the bench and blew out his breath, “Can we just leave the dicks down for a while, Sam, talk about something else? Later on,” He showed his palms in an opening gesture, “Maybe we have a beer or two, get a little buzzed, we’ll re-raise the subject, as it were. Anything can happen. But for now, let’s change it. The price of cat food is good.”

Sam’s face remained still as he turned away, bent and reached into the cupboard beneath the sink to rummage out a bottle of rye. With three mugs from the drainboard and the rye in his fists, he poked a wooden armchair to the end of the table with his foot, sat, spread his largesse toward Paul, rested his forearms on the arms of the chair, “You pour.”

Paul looked at the quart bottle, the seal broken, but only the shoulders gone, “Jesus, Sam, you just can’t be nice, can you? Always have to make it complicated.”

“What’s complicated? You fuckin’ ingrate, I’m offerin’ you a drink. You don’t want it, fine.”

“Oh, sure, and I have to decide how buzzed we get and when the subject gets raised again. Right?”

Sam cocked his head with mock dignity, “Excuse me, but I understood we changed the subject. You got some kinda fixation, boy? You got a lot of nerve bad-mouthing my social graces. Would you just pour the damned bottle!”

Paul did, half mugs, and slid one over, “Here’s at you, Sam.” He raised his cup of rye.

Sam lifted his and smiled, “At you.” He swallowed, “You still paintin’ pictures?”

The whisky stripped the hairs from the back of Paul’s throat and landed on its back in his belly; winded, he puckered his lips and breathed carefully through his nose. Sam watched and swallowed twice from his own mug. Paul sucked a little air and spoke through the pucker, “It’s been a while.”

“You quit?”

“Raw whisky, yah.”

“I’m talkin’ about pictures.”

“I’m not.”

Sam flexed his fingers, nodded his head, “You didn’t drink in the city?”

“Ohhh, yah.” Paul was beginning to warm, “Lots to drink in the city. Too much to drink in the city. Too much to drink is why I’m not there. But not straight whisky. I wouldn’t be there, or here. Just too many places to get drunk, you’re on your face in no time. You have to thin it out. Problem is, I’m not a safe drunk anymore. Lots of people can get by on a buzz, but I have a hell of a time not buzzing right over the edge. I get a thirst on, I drink. I get chatty, I get thirstier, I get drinkier and thump, I’m offside and more than likely pissed off. Sometimes I’m just fine, brilliant even, and sometimes I’m a mean and angry drunk, Sammy, and I don’t know why.”

“Something you don’t like about yourself?” Sam spoke a question, but it wasn’t.

“If I thought that was the answer, wouldn’t I be able to sort it out?”

“Not necessarily, must be lots of things you don’t like. Hard to pick the right one, could be some combination of a whole lot of ugly yous. Might be ‘cause you’re queer, eh.”

“Oh, for chrissakes Sam! I don’t give a rats ass ab…”

“Yah, yah, yah, I’ve heard it all before, you’ve told me before. I heard it under the railway bridge, I heard it in a canoe, I heard it in that fat broad’s kitchen on acid and tequila. ‘Member that? Jesus, she was fat. But, you know, there’s times these days when I get so sick of bein’ dragged around by my pecker that I hate the sight of bacon. And you can’t tell me, doin’ what your doin’, that you don’t get disgusted with yourself. Anyway,” Sam’s shoulders went back and a finger pointed at Paul, “Could be ‘cause you’re gettin’ thin on top there, or ‘cause you’re not paintin’ pictures.”

“I can’t use a brush anymore, Sam, my hands sweat so much I can’t hold on.”

“What?”

“Really. I pick up a brush and sweat pours off my palms. It’s ridiculous. It’s scary.” Paul humped half a shrug, “I don’t know what to do about it.”

“Y’ aren’t dyin’, are ya? Ah, shit…” Sam forced pain and fear into disgust, “You gone and got the big A from playin’ peckers. Fuckin’ asshole!”

“No. Wrong, Sam. I’ve had the tests. I’m clean. And I haven’t screwed around nearly as much as you’d like to think.” Cocking his head, Paul affected a leer, “You like to think about me screwing around?”

Sam affected a blank stare that hadn’t heard, “So, how long you been wet?”

Paul discarded a couple of responses before taking a deep breath, “Over a year. Spring last year, maybe.”

“Like, around Easter?”

“No, Sam, I’m not that twisted.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Well, if I’m that twisted, it’d be real blood, not just sweat.”

“Yah.” Sam accepted that. “So, what d’ you do in the city? Work? Mess around? What?”

“Oh, I did a lot of social services stuff, some really godawful jobs, a Visiting Homemaker for a while. That was bad, going into people’s houses.” Paul sketched a shudder that caught his shoulder blades and turned real, “There are some uhg-ly lives out there. One or two weren’t so bad; an old Russian woman, Missus Becta, she was okay, fun to take shopping. But usually there’s some streak of really weird, mean shit going on.”

A fumbling at the woodshed door turned Paul’s head to watch Brad, the necks of six beers in his fingers, a thin split of kindling gripped in his teeth, kick the door to and trot across the room.

“There was one place, woman spent her life in bed bitching because her heart’s on the wrong side. Born with it over here,” Paul pointed, “Instead of here. Twenty-four hour a day bitching. Nobody ever did anything right, far as she was concerned. Everything she told you to do just made the place a worse pigsty. God, that was gross!”

Thumping the beers to a stand on the table, Brad made his eyes round at the bottle of rye, nodded at Paul and dropped the stick of wood from his teeth, “Jeez, depressing, eh? Imagine not bein’ able to think to yourself, ‘Well, I may be a bitch and the house looks like shit, but hey, my heart’s in the right place’.”

Sam made his face innocent and spoke with a wheedle, “And would you, Brad, care for a cup of fresh coffee?”

Startled, Brad peered at him, swung his head around to look at Paul quizzically and swung back to Sam, “Are you being funny? You are, aren’t you? You’re actually trying for laughs. Well, well, this is a special occasion,” He beamed a big grin and reached for the rye, “I’d better have some of this then, there’ll be toasts.”

“You’ll be toast, if you don’t sit down and quit fartin’ around.” Sam missed a swat, “Pour it and park yer ass, Paul’s tryin’ to tell a bear story.”

“It’s no bear story, Sam, just where I’ve been. You asked.”

“Sounds like a bear story to me.”

“The bear story is that I quit my job, came back up here and I’m stuck in my mother’s house. That’s the bear story. Nothing I did in the city’s as scary as that.”

“Well, it’s the times, isn’t it?” Brad leaned in and snapped a beer cap, “I mean, we’re into a depression, eh, no matter what they call it, it’s a pothole and it’s gonna play hell with your shocks. I know I have t…”

“Will you shut the fuck up.” Sam snatched the open beer, took a hard swallow and passed it to Paul, “You and that shitbox Camaro… If I have to listen to one more car metaphor, I’m gonna tie your tongue to the tailpipe and take a run up to…”

“Oh, it’s metaphors now, is it? The Literate Salmon,” Brad threw a wry look at Paul, “He must have read that newspaper he came wrapped in.”

Paul snorted into surprised laughter, “You little tyke!”

“Tyke? Little bastard’s almost as mouthy as you are, eh, Magarry? Wonder where he learned that?” Sam rapped a forefinger on his chair arm, “What I want to know is what you quit.”

“Everything. My entire life. I quit, resigned, walked out, punched out, vacated. Stood on my hind principles and said I’m outta here.” He considered his mug of rye, “Actually, I quit before I got fired.”

Sam pretended patience, “What was the job, Dickhead?”

“At the AGO. Art Gallery of Ontario. I was an Art Guard. It’s kind of like…”

“A security guard.”

“Yahh, but, you know, it’s more…”

“Umhum. Classy. Real class act, Paul. Went right to the top, eh?”

“It was a job, for chrissake, you sound like my mother. I couldn’t stomach the lame, halt and blind anymore.”

“Big career change, babysit a buncha pictures. Fuck, you’re an ambitious little fella. You have to do bedpans with that home job?”

“One guy, yah, in Rosedale, weird. And a couple times for the Telltale Heart. The old guy was regular. They gave me the men, most of the staff were women. And a couple old queens.”

“Jesus!” Sam wagged his head in sympathy, “So, why’d you quit the guard job? It couldn’t have been that bad.”

“Women. A bunch of women got me in trouble.” Paul shrugged.

“Oh, well, there y’ are, eh?” Sam rolled back in his chair and spread his hands wide, “That’s the broads for ya. One at a time’s not so bad, y’ manage to keep the chains on ‘er, run ‘er over the rough spots, but hell, two! I can’t find the door fast enough when there’s two at once.”

“Are,” Brad barked the word over the mouth of the beer bottle, “Are, two women, plural. Plural noun, plura…”

“Shut up, y’ little prick.” Eyes rolling, Sam sneered indifference from Brad to Paul, “Are, two.”

“Arr, matey!” Giddyness from an empty stomach needed beer and Paul waggled his fingers at Sam as he reached for a fresh one, “Yoohoo, Pirate! Are you talking sex, or is this a social phobia of yours, Sam? I find it really hard to believe you’ve never done the…” Paul hinged the palms of his hands, “…sandwich thing. You’re a natural, couple pieces of white broad, salmon salad, brown broad for fibre, hell, salmon loaf with mayonnaise… Or, are you saying that two women together can defend themselves from your basic male pig personality?” He prodded the tabletop with a finger, “Because that I’ll believe. I’m not sure about the sex part.”

Blowing a breath of exasperation, Sam bent a look of disgust on Paul, “Y’ just can’t lighten up, can you? I was talkin’ about women in bunches. Okay? Something I know something about. Okay? It’s not all that hard keepin’ one woman occupied, specially if she likes yer crank, but you get two of them together and all of a sudden they’re busy. That’s all I’m tryin’ to tell you. It was you said a bunch of women got you into trouble, and I was just tellin’ you that I don’t doubt it a bit. Now, will you get on with it? Were they tough girls?”

“Oh god.” Spinning images in the back of his eye stabbed at his temples and sent the rye awash in Paul’s belly__ brick red and rubber black dissolving in tiny apple reds and purple blush, sky light flashing silver curves up a Mercedes hood whipping wind into unfurling capes and shawls, brazzen hair, silk carpet pursed, pursed lips kissing, disapproving, heels striking stone, rubber heels, spike heels, stabbing fingers, nicotine yellow jean jacket__ “Oh god…” Paul slid the cool beer bottle beside his nose, “There was this pissed punk stumbling around the driveway and I… Well, it was my job, so…”

“Where, Paul? Where the fuck’re you talking about?”

“Work, the AGO, the Gallery! I was at work, for godsake, gimme a break, it only just happened. I’m still…”

“When?”

“Jesus, just this Friday. I haven’t even thought about it yet, so shut up and let me tell you. Okay? The Blake show’s up, super busy, everybody wants to see the Blakes, and I was…”

“Blake who?”

“Fuck, Sammy!” Squeezing his eyes, Paul stretched his mouth in a silent scream, stopped, took a deep breath, opened his eyes and spoke flatly, “William Blake, late eighteenth to nineteenth century English painter, good draughtsman, bit of a weirdo. Poet, too. Didn’t we do something like ‘Tyger, tyger burning bright’ one year in school, Sam? Grade nine? Remember grade nine, Sam?”

“Yah, yah, you mighta learned a cute poem,” He turned a heavy head to Brad, “I was busy gettin’ laid that year.” And turned again, “So, what’d he paint, this Tiger Blake guy, daisies and kittens, or tits and ass?”

“Oh, lots of tits and ass, Sam. Wrapped it all up in religious allegory, mysticism. Painted down Bible stories and bits of mythology, scraped the barrel for all that end-of-the-century decadence kind of thing, angels and monsters all sweatin’ it out. Some of it’s pretty sexy, and the colour’s nice. Kind of like comics.”

“So,” Sam tugged at the story with a pretense of patience, “You were at work. And then..?”

“Okay, so… I was working Casualty – that’s what we call the drive-up door, where the sticks and wheelchairs get dropped. Yah, the lame and halt,” Paul shrugged, “Eh, I know where the brakes are. Anyway, it was nuts, busiest I’ve ever seen, and then it broke just before three, only lasted about half an hour, but I got to step out for a smoke. Speaking of which…” Before Paul’s hands could reach his pockets, Brad lobbed a pack of cigarettes onto the table and followed it with the flick of a lighter. “Uum, thanks. So, there was this drunk with a bad shag…” He waved a hand at Brad, “Some are worse than others, at least you’ve got good hair. So, he’s pissed and lost and bumming smokes, alone and broke in the city, getting scared and about to hit TILT, do anything for a smoke and a beer and a smile, lost if he does and lost if he doesn’t. You know…” Paul let his focus rest on Brad’s shoulder, “Y’ know, if all the asshole sportifs who go white-water rafting and kite-hanging and Amazon hiking to get in touch with their inner strengths, or clean their chakras, would just empty their pockets and hit the streets for a weekend, they’d find their inner child real fast, and it’d probably need a diaper change. Assholes wasting money on virtual reality, when real life’s cheaper. What do you do, anyway, Brad?”

Brad had been born into humiliation. Old Bruce, his dead dad, had come by birth to a lumberyard which he’d never quite earned in his own father’s lifetime and which he drank into debt thereafter. Bruce’s wife did the books and rescued the house when a cheap-spruce and dry-wall franchise bought him up and put him to filling the nail bins. And Bruce poured nails into paper sacks and beer into himself and something always poked through and scratched. His liver went, and with it went all that was left of pride. His widow went on sleeping with the Accounts Manager once a month and helping out in the busy season.

“Talk about life bein’ cheap!” A snorting Sam delayed Brad’s answer, “Punk pulls his pecker for Cashway.”

“I drive truck for Cashway.” Brad pretended to ignore Sam, “Delivery.”

“Drives around pullin’ his pecker for Cashway. Look at him,” Sam waved a hand, “Prime beef in tight-ass jeans and busted down boots,” affected a mocking drawl, “Oh Ma’am, just deliverin’ yer screws, Ma’am. Sure you don’t need a plank, Ma’am?”

“You are so full of shit, Sam. Once, I got lucky. Maybe twice.” The edge of a malicious grin betrayed the truth of Brad’s modesty.

“You don’t suppose he’s jealous?” Paul asked.

Sam snorted, “What, motorin’ back the roads in somebody else’s truck, burnin’ somebody else’s gas, bangin’ somebody else’s woman? Damn right I’m jealous. Like bein’ one of those California poolboys, just drivin’ from housewife to housewife. They keep sayin’ our future’s in the service industry. Hell, I thought that’s what I’ve been doin’. I built three decks, a dock and a couple cottage roofs this summer, and all I got was one lousy blowjob. Good pussy’s gettin’ harder to come by all the time, you know. Population’s aging, eh?”

Paul wouldn’t meet Brad’s eye, “Is that the reason, Sam?”

“Fuckin’ A. It’s this babyboomer generation thing, they’re all gettin’ past it, eh.”

“They are, Sam?” Brad didn’t dare meet Paul’s eye.

Sam wiped the air with both hands, “Hell, the women out there, they’re old, lads. All busy havin’ hot flashes and drinkin’ that herbal shit, worryin’ about which way their tits are hangin’, tryin’ to figure out how to get rid of the old man and keep the house now the kids are old enough to operate the can opener, they haven’t got time for a fuck. Or else they wanta know you first, and I haven’t got time for that shit, too busy makin’ a livin’, I’ve gotta get their goddamn dry-wall hung before the old man comes home and starts bitchin’ about how much it’s costin’ and how it’s takin’ too long. Jesus! Assholes think they’re fuckin’ carpenters ‘cause they read the fancy tool magazines when they’re takin’ a shit. They wanta know how many studs you used in the wall, how wide’s yer centre? ‘Cause some asshole-buddy with a gold-plated tape measure says twelve inches is best. And what’re you doin’ nailin’ that drywall? Screwin’s the way to go. They’re all fixed on their dicks. And every word he says, the old woman gets a little redder in the face and you know she’s thinkin’ how she just blew the chance to find out if your dick’s bigger’n his, and then she tries to shut him up and he sees her gettin’ all nervous and gets all suspicious and starts addin’ two and two and gets twelve inches again – which is why he’ll never be a fuckin’ carpenter – and his mouth gets mean and he decides he’s gonna finish the job himself. Fuck, I’m the one keeps gettin’ shafted, figure they don’t have to pay me ‘cause the job’s not done.”

“Seriously? They give you the boot and don’t pay you?” Paul was genuinely shocked, “How the fuck they get away with that?”

“‘Cause they know I don’t have the permits for doin’ their goddamn plumbin’ and wirin’, they couldn’t afford it if I did. So, what am I gonna do, call the cops?”

“So, what, you just keep getting stiffed? You can’t do anything about it? How the hell d’ you keep all this…” Paul waved a hand at Sam’s life.

“Ask him about the bills for materials.” Brad was obviously controlling a grin.

“What? So, they have to pay the yard bill before I pick up a hammer. So what? I’m not that stupid. I mighta been once – that prick Fadder – but not twice. They can try fuckin’ me over for the labour, but they’re not gonna screw around with my credit.”

Brad gave him a dry look, “That’s not what I mean, is it?” He caught Paul’s eye and swept a hand at the walls about them, “Two by sixes on twelve inch centres, unhuh, four inches of foam and pink fibreglass, lath and real plaster.”

“I thought it looked real.” Paul wagged his head, “Sealed up tight. The steel doors’re a nice touch, too.”

“Unhuh. Nothing but the best for Sam. There’s more lumber and insulation, miles of wire, packed in there, than all the other walls in this whole neck of the woods put together. Lots of hollow walls out there.”

“You sly bastard,” Paul nodded a long look at the walls and turned to Sam, “And they don’t notice, they don’t try holding you up over the bill?”

“Oh fuck, they all whine, but they’re all hot for house beautiful at that point, and when I tell ‘em the bill for labour’ll be cheaper, they piss right off. And then, sure enough, soon as the real shit work’s done, soon as they start thinkin’ about me bein’ there all day with the wife – It’s costin’ too much, it’s takin’ too long, and hell, she can do the compound, sand ‘er down, slap on some paint. What the fuck she do all day with the kids in school anyway? So, I just make damn sure I’ve got me a box or two of nails and a good saw blade right from the get go.”

“Snort.” Brad said.

“Yah, so? Maybe a few sticks of wood, nothin’ greedy, just sorta what’ll be owed about the time he starts addin’. They’re all fuckin’ snakes, it’s the only way to deal with ‘em, get a stick.

“That weasel snake, Fadder, I didn’t see him comin’. Stupid. I figured his wife was such a dog and he was such a dumb fuck, he’d piss on his own foot before he’d call me off. Stunned bugger decides the wife looks like Madonna, he probably had the magazine upside down, and I know I’m about to hear how much it’s costin’, and how long it is and how thick it is and how much she likes it, just as soon as Fadder comes off shift. And I’ve been a little back behind myself, takin’ it easy, lots of labour on this one, a little forgetful about the bill for all this fancy floorin’ I’m layin’ through the bedrooms and into the bathroom. Old Fadder was probably stoppin’ at the beer store for the gas to get home, so I put a couple cracks in the gasket on his shitter before I put the last of the floor down. Oak tongue ‘n groove, inch and five eighths. Set ‘er real tight.”

“You bear!” Paul’s voice was round with awe, “And then he chased you off?”

“Oh, I left as slow as I could, drank his beer, he was so busy playin’ with his new leathers he forgot I was there. Asshole drove a beat-up pick-up and went snakey for straps and buckles, redneck gets a wardrobe. Jesus. I’ve got a beautiful set of chisels he lost. Man’s a threat to himself, like you said, pissed and lost and hittin’ TILT. Buddy’s lucky he’s got that ugly wife, a man needs a dog.”

“How long you figure the gasket held? When was this, anyway?”

“Couple years back.” The raised fingers of Brad’s hand caught Sam’s eye, “Four?” Thumb waggled. “Five? Christ. Rabbit on a run, eh?” Sam sighed and took a slow swallow of rye, “I figure that underlay was soaked with Fadder shit in about a week. Dumb fucker let it go six months, had to rip the whole sucker out and start over, and the stink’ll never be out of those joists. Hah! Don’t mess with the Indian.” Sam’s right fist gave a ceremonial pound to the table.

“You are a beast, Sammy,” Paul shook his head in admiration, “But how’s all this relevant to you not getting any pussy ‘cause it’s all weatherbeaten and preoccupied? What’s your problem? Aren’t you leaving one detail out of your theory, Geronimo? You too are just another old boomer. It’s the numbers, Sammy, we all have to worry about which way it’s hangin’, and whether or not we’ve started to leak. We’re not golden anymore. Well, I might be, but you sure as hell aren’t. Still, there must be some young stuff out there fluffy enough to soak up your manhood.” Paul swung to Brad, “Chicks still exist, don’t they?”

“Oh, yah, there’s always chicks.” Brad caught his own slurring esses, “There are.”

“See? So why not chicks, Sam? They go too fast for you?”

Black eyes boring into Paul’s head, Sam sucked in half a cigarette and blew boils of smoke from his nose.

Unperturbed, Paul sipped rye and washed it with beer, “Even the beer commercials go too fast for me. You don’t want chicks, do you?”

“Look, Magarry, it may not mean a lot to you, proof against pussy like y’ are, but a chick’s a scary thing. Y’ bust ‘er, y’ buy ‘er. Next thing you know, you’ve got a bitch at yer heels and a yard full of diaper shit.”

“Jesus, Sam! Doesn’t have to be that bad.”

“Doesn’t have to be. That’s yer worst case scenario, though, a houseful of rugrats and no plumbing. You know that diaper pail aroma? That’s yer starter smell, comes with yer starter home. Randyman special. Needs work. The ad says it all. I’ve seen it.” Sam turned out empty palms, “That’s chicks.”

“So, you’re not considering marriage as an option, I can see that, but, oh my, you’re so jaded, Sammy, in a provincial sort of way.”

“He’s coarse, that’s what Marcy says he is.”

“Oh, Marcy, fuckin’ Marcy!” Sam glared at Brad, “Your sister the girl guide, what’s she know about anything, alway kept her tits in her sweater.” He glared at Paul, “What d’ you mean, provincial?”

“Ohhh, Sam,” His elbows on the table, Paul dropped his head into his hands, “You are… the most… unreconstructed yahoo… You know, the world’s not limited to this side of Apsley, Sam. There are other ways to live.”

Sam spoke without a second thought, “Like livin’ with your mother, Magarry?”

Nausea bloomed in Paul’s stomach with the feel of a rotten melon collapsing in hot sun, his fingers blindly sought the ashtray to drop the cigarette which threatened suddenly to unplug his boiling gut. Slumping into the table, laying a hand over his eyes to hide the light, he looked to his breathing until he could speak, “It’s true. Oh God!” Taking his hand from his eyes, he waved it at Sam with a rueful smile, “I apologize. Sorry, your life’s your own, not my business. It’s just… I guess I’m just glad to see you, is what it is, and…” His fingers worried his upper lip, “…and… you know…”

Sam knew what his own feelings were, but he was afraid they were leftovers from his storybook childhood, his adoptive past of Scrooge, Lassie and Sammy Salmon. He was certain his sentiments weren’t Indian enough, probably not even Manooth-Irish enough, and he had constantly to battle for firmer ground, or thicker bush, “Let’s go shoot something.”

Brad pressed his hand to his mouth, hard, trying not to spray the table with a mouthful of whisky.

Paul picked some sleep from the corner of an eye, flicked it from his thumb and sighed, “I don’t know why I bother.”

“It’s cause you’re a meddler, a shit-disturber, always have been, y’ little wanker.”

“Bullshit, you’re the one who always gets in the deep doodie, not me.”

“Tell me about it. Whenever shit happened, you were always somewhere else, weren’t you?”

“I got it on me a few times, Buddy!”

“Yah, but not nearly what you deserved.”

“You’re both brats, the pair of you,” Brad had managed to swallow, but had to cough off the fumes, “You always have been. You think with a name like mine I don’t know a brat when I see one? You’re the ones called me Brat in the first place and I’ve been watching you over and over again all my life, and you’re both shit-kickers. I’ve seen you. Neither one of you’s a real redneck, but you know ‘em so well you do a damned good imitation. You’re worse than the real thing.” He blew a drag of smoke into the air, “I don’t know, you’d think maybe it’s something in the water, but I drink it and I’m certainly not you guys.”

Paul and Sam swung their heads from Brad to each other and stared. Paul finally raised his brow, “So, what d’ you wanta shoot?”

While Sam stretched and considered his answer, Paul had a sharp, well-lighted vision, a balanced composition of himself walking the drive to his mother’s house, of iron beds and cups of tea, of sitting around an endless circle of furniture; of himself slowly drying into a curl, a squirrel in a rocker worrying nuts. His blood fell and bounced once from the knees and rose on a shiver to a sight of himself alone in a motherless house, magnificent, generous and proud, sitting around an endless circle of furniture with tea, “Let’s shoot my mother.”

Brad drained his whisky. He lived with his mother. That is, he lived in her house, the bungalow she’d rescued from bankruptcy. He used the mudroom with its toilet and tin shower and big storage cupboards that linked garage to kitchen, and he used the kitchen stairs to his basement bedroom. His mother was quick and he would pass a boiling pot on the stove, a cigarette smoking in an ashtray, the telephone receiver dangling down the wall, and know that she had stepped through the livingroom door at the sound of his approach.

Her guilt and his disgust had grown in silence for as long as he remembered. She had never protected him from his father’s rage, the yelling and slapping for his messes and mistakes, and he had early learned to curl himself against the flailing hands. His father had never charged his mother with her infidelities, had never raised his voice and hand to her.

Brad had reasoned that Old Bruce drank to drown the pain, for how could he not know, in a town the size of Bannock, where his wife was and who with. But how explain the choice? Injury, impotence, queerness, disease, madness, had all occured to Brad. Cowardice, he decided at fourteen, having raised his own fist in the face of a tirade that spluttered to a whine. He claimed the mudroom and basement then, pissed out his territory.

And yet, why cowardice? His mother was no scrapper and half Bruce’s size. Afraid she’d leave? Who’d know? The four of them, for Marcy’d been hiding, first with her dolls, then with her books and guitar in her bedroom till she escaped to the world – packed and never came home from the prom – the four of them had come to do their own feedings and cleanings and washings, mostly done in silence, the clatter of a spoon, thump of the dryer, gush of water in the plumbing the only sounds in the house. And Marcy’s flight had simplified the arrangement, for Bruce moved into her old room, Brad bought Mister Coffee and a microwave for his basement, kept his beer in the furnace room and learned to like the temperature. He realized that the answer was love the day they buried Bruce, so he went on living with his mother, “Let’s shoot mine,” he said.

Sam’s consideration had progressed from a twelve-gauge in Fadder’s shorts, through serial killing of skinks, to mass murder, to a Rambo assault with tanks on Bannock itself. He imagined a twelve-point buck and fish in a bucket; he saw buzzards and dirtpigs hanging from fences; he saw himself in feathers and leathers, with one smooth pick at a bowstring pin Little Joe to the barn and paint the town with scalps and screech and red-headed women. But the idea of mother-shooting gave him pause.

He made a display of screwing the cap back tight on the rye, “You guys’re such punks. You aren’t up to mother-shootin’. You talk it, but you couldn’t walk it. I’d lay money. What the fuck…” He shoved back his chair and rose with a knuckle thump to the table, “Come on, we’re gonna go shoot some pool. We’ll take a run up to Manooth and put some of the Irish lads under the table, drink ‘em down, or knock ‘em down, however they wanta go. We’ll take their money on the balls and get ‘em feelin’ lonesome and set ‘em up for a fight, let ‘em have a go for the Pope and Billy the Orange. Beats sittin’ around here drinkin’ up all my booze.”

Brad wagged a beer bottle at Sam, “Who the fuck bought…”

“Yah, yah, yah, and you’re buyin’ the first round at the Arlen, too, since you’re so damn efficient at it. Bank the stove and shut ‘er down.” He switched off the coffee machine, “There’s a waste, y‘ piss tanks.”

“You’re the one who broke out the whisky.” Brad scrabbled up the beer bottles and headed for the shed.

“Sure, and we’re gonna go have us a real celebration, let those rednecks know the hottest piece of ass ever to go south of Apsley’s back in the Bun, eh. Those lads could use somethin’ other than their sisters to lay pipe to, Paul, y’ old cocksucker.”

Paul rattled his head and blew howitzer shells from the back of his throat, “Do we call this a date, Sam, or are you just toying with my affections? I think I’d just as soon pass, as get the shit kicked out of me in the Arlen parking lot, if you don’t mind. I know those boys, related to half of them, for chrissake, I’m not sure I want to risk my ass to find out they still think faggots are stove wood. They’re mad enough about Injun rights and gun control, let alone they don’t even need a license to go for me. Your idea of a good time’s about as bright as it ever was, Sammy. You said getting hit hurts a lot longer than it used to, well, getting dead lasts about as long as it ever did, so, I’d as soon drop off in town and go drink tea with my mother, if it’s all the same to you.”

He poked at the ashtray, checking for fire, “But you two lads should slide on up and have a good time, bend a cue, shoot a few elbows, snatch a scalp or two. Just make sure to scamper before they get organized, ‘cause they know all the licks and the runways and the buggers’ll wait in the cold all their lives to bring you down if they think they need to.” Paul tidied mugs from table to sink, checking on empties with a quick drain on each one.

Sam raised long hands in a mocking shimmy and waved the other two in a herd for the door, “Ah, go on with ya, it’s not that bad, I’m just puttin’ the gears to ya, Buddy, really, it’s not so bad, not like it used to be, and you’re right anyways, half Manooth’s Magarrys and they aren’t gonna gang ya, that’d be incest.” He did a big eye roll from Paul to Brad and back, “Mind you, it’s what they know.”

“Jesus, you’re a sensitive shit, Salmon,” Brad closed dampers, glared disgust and shook his head at Sam, “You’re such a gracious host kinda guy. You know? A real Walmart greeter.” Spreading his hands in apology, he offered Paul precedence to the door, “Honestly, it’s not what he says, the place is cool. All the bush bunnies and the beer commercial zipperheads’ve peddled their cute little four-bys back down to the smoke since Labour Day and it’s chilled right down to the locals, and they don’t give a shit who y’ are. They just want out of the house.”

“Just what I said,” Sam threw over his shoulder, keying the deadbolt behind them, “All them crazy Dogan cousins of his fightin’ with the wife, sick of the kids, lookin’ for a stiff one, desperate for somethin’ to take a poke at. Yahoo!”

“Shut up, Sam! You want him to come along, or not?”

The black of night surprised George when he’d been about half an hour on the river. Idling, till his eyes grew focus and silhouettes and stars made sense, he hunted memory to show him the way. That night with Elizabeth, I brought her out here, way down here, and asked her if she wanted to be my wife, and she said, ‘Yes, certainly!’ You reached for her and she… She started flapping her arms around her head and said we had to go back, the bugs were eating her alive. Well, I didn’t get far that night. On the river, either. Been no reason to come down here for a long time, not since the Landing got pumps and the stores opened up in Tier. That long? That’s a lot of your life. Yah, well, I’m back. So, get on with it. George glared at the dark and went into gear.

Brad sprawled in apparent comfort, one arm hooked to his chairback, the other to his beer, his legs claiming territory and his head cocked at ease, but in his gut his substance boiled. He watched Sam line up a shot on a clutch of reds jamming an end pocket and wondered what the fuck he was doing sitting in the same goddam boring bar, in the same goddam boring ass-end of nowhere that he’d wasted twenty-six goddam boring years of his life in. Why? Where’s the romance?

Sam’s shot required a full-body lie the length of the rail, and as his legs were quite long enough, he could manage with only the bridge of his fingers touching the table. Brad glanced at Paul squatting, cue in hand, eyes level to the rail, hard focussed on Sam, and had to admit that it was one of Sam’s most affecting poses; cool as a ballet guy working the bar, hot as Rambo nailing…? Anything… Russians, Arabs, women. Drywall. Where’s the romance?

With no band Sundays at the Arlen, the jukebox was cranked for a running set of white girl blues, and Brad, sucking up a couple deep breaths, mumbled ‘What’ll I do? What’ll I do?’. He understood himself to be dying rather faster than any other of the dozen or so patrons scattered, solitary and clumped, in the dirty yellow pine light of the bar. My insides are rottener than old Joe Snow. Brad saluted the neck of his beer to a muddy old man gumming a smoke and talking to a table in the dark.

It was a hormone thing, a chromosome thing, x, y, too many, not enough, whatever. A certain amount of correction happened at birth; a choice, slight alteration, ever-lasting attention to his testosterone level and the vague understanding that the organs of his body were determined to grow old before their time. His time, anyway. Exact reference to Brad’s condition had always been avoided, especially by Old Bruce, for manly reasons, family pride, and come pubescence, when Brad became aware enough to be horrified with embarassment, he, himself, skillfully manipulated a conspiracy of whispers that reversed his problem to one of excessive virility in need of medical control. It worked. The town, if it had known anything to the contrary, had come to believe him more, rather than less, normal, and the expectations of curiosity seekers had kept his jeans in motion ever since. At Cashway, he’d long suspected that his reputation counted for more than did his efficiency on the job, his touch of dyslexia tending to deliver a load of lumber to a cement mixer, and as much as he wanted to believe in his own myth, he couldn’t disguise from himself the fact that at birth he’d been sexed like a chicken. ‘What’ll I do?’ He watched Sam and sipped beer.

Squatting, eyeing Sam’s one-legged lie, the long washed blue, cowboy-booted, the hard brown arm reaching from rolled plaid cradling the cue like his long gold cock, which Paul imagined erect and hard against his belly, his bent thighs burned and his buttocks stirred and he strained against the seam of his jeans. Dizzy from the plunge of blood, he touched his cue to the floor for balance and slowly drew himself erect, “You still look good face down on a pool table, Sammy. Still got a nice butt.” Posed against his cue, Paul let it rub blue chalk into the black cotton over his left nipple.

Calm as a heron dining, Sam shouldered his stare to take in the fish on offer, “Fucking queer,” delivered flat in recognition, “Always hot for it, aren’t you?”

“Not always enough. And hardly ever at the right time. Nope, it’s just you, Sam. You always did it for me.” Paul caught himself licking his lips and had to finish with exaggerated mockery.

“Hey!” Sam’s head snapped up at the room, “I never did nothin’ for ya. Ya got that?” He didn’t think anybody’d heard, but he felt a very red Indian till his pressure dropped. “I never touched you and you never touched me. Right?” The laugh behind Paul’s solemn face frustrated him, “Right?!”

“Okay, Sammy, whatever you say,” Paul’s right hand slid lightly up and down the taper of his cue, “We’ve never done it.”

“Will you stop that!” Black eyes fierce on the jerking hand.

“Yet.” Paul closed his hand and squeezed.

Sam snapped his shot and the crack of balls fired hard through the bar. The clutch of reds jammed and puckered at the pocket, bounced and rolled idly away; the black spun on itself, trickled and fell with a soft smack into the old leather net. Sam unlimbered, turned with a slow controlled burning and glared at Paul, “I oughta make you eat that.”

“Any time, Sam, any time.” Unable to stop himself, Paul was soaking under the thick cloth of his sweatshirt, he felt headlong and silly and dangerously unafraid and imagined himself sinking to his knees, a hard brown hand at the back of his head… Stop! He focused on breaths from his belly and waited, as if on tiptoe.

Brad was never certain whether Sam had a queer streak in him, or not. He sure likes to brag about all the blowjobs he gets, but all the lads claim that out of habit. More than once Sam had pointed out a nice ass, but Brad figured that was narcissism comparing the competition, besides, nice female ass certainly seemed to be the priority. Then again, maybe that meant old Sam had a thing for nice ass, period. And maybe that meant… See, you just can’t tell about old Sam. I know him and Paul were tight as a boy and his pup when they were young lads, Marcy said, and Paul was always ready to bend over, long as I ever heard, but Sam… Brad took a slow haul on his beer and eyed the two at the pool table. Not that I really give a shit, but right now the two of ‘em are givin’ off enough heat to dry your socks. If it starts gettin’ twisted, I’m out of here.

Bea was busy tidying her tea things to the kitchen. She switched on the harsh florescent, rinsed cup and saucer under the running tap, and reaching for a tea towel caught her reflection in the window. It wasn’t the hair needing a comb, it was the stoop of the shoulders that bothered her. She hoped Anna was in a generous mood tonight, she needed a taste or two of rum for courage. Counter wiped, dishcloth hung, florescent off, she pulled on a heavy old zip-front cardigan that had been her father’s, switched on the yard light, touched the key tied with string in the sweater pocket and stepped out into the night.

George was throttling down, remembering a shallow-backed cove somewhere to starboard, before the lazy bend of the river nicked and notched its way to the bridge. There should be a wharf across the back of it, with a gas pump, the river side of the hardware store.

It was much like he remembered, the wide wharf sagged and the glass cylinder pump had been replaced with a sixties mod pillar of faded turquoise with interior lighting, but it was shut off and chained for the night, if not the season, and so George didn’t see the tip of a low green-painted dock standing out from the head of the cove until a yard light snapped on three heart beats before a good solid kerwhump and the barking crack of dry rotten cedar confirmed it.

When George hit Bea’s dock, he thought right away about publicity, he didn’t like his name in the papers, not even the business section, and she thought about the premium date on her liability insurance, so that neither of them was quite ready for the rush of blood and the silly grins which greeted their mutual recognition.

“Bea McAlpine!” A bit giddy, he realized he was enormously glad to see her, “Pretend you don’t know me.”

“I’ll need to see your driver’s licence.” She didn’t want her premiums going haywire in some whiplash suit. “George…” Her heart went up, “…Preston!” Her heart went down, and continued up and down at a breathless pace.

“I’m sorry about your dock,” He thought she looked one healthy woman, foursquare and zipped to the throat in her old-geezer sweater, “I’ll certainly look after it, have it replaced.”

“No you won’t. What a handsome boat! You’re sure it’s okay? You’re sure you haven’t broken any…?”

“Oh, yah, pretty as she is, she’s built like a bri… She’s just… lovely, she’s lovely.”

“Are you all right? Tie that thing and come up to the light. Let me have a good look at you.” Stepping over to the yard light pole, she heard her own boldness, “A look to make sure you haven’t hurt yourself and don’t know it. Bruises happen…” She managed to bite off, ‘at our age’. She examined the veins on the bridge of his nose, looked for a pulse from temple to temple over the bow of his brow, to his eyes, to his mouth, and away, when she noticed she was holding her breath.

George saw a face with a buttery soft skin. Rich shortbread, he thought, god you’re disgusting. She’s handsome and I’m hungry. Priorities don’t change, they just shift. He wondered if she had anything to drink.

“I’m just on my way to the Rosses’, to the manse to help Anna soak her fruitcakes in rum. I expect you could use some. A drink, I mean, for the shock. Or does that kill you these days? I can’t keep up.” Suddenly flustered, she turned in the circle of light, uncertain, “They’ll be wondering where I am.” I’m wondering where I am! Good God, this man’s wife ruined my marriage, tried to kill me, my whole family. Well, not really, it would’ve been an accident. Yes, but she makes the accidents. Bea’s breath lurched in her throat – You don’t suppose this…? And she stared hard into the surrounding night – Where’d he come from? She can’t be out there. It’s an accident, surely. Exactly. Stop it, you’ll make yourself sick. This’s awful. Why is he here? “Why are you here?”

“I came down for the church supper. I’m alone up on the lake, and I didn’t bring…”

“I said it would happen!” Bea shook her head at the thought of inaccurate signage.

…any supplies, was what he’d meant to say. But did she mean Elizabeth? “I came up yesterday and…”

“And saw the sign and it said Sunday, but not which Sunday! I knew it would happen. I saw it myself and called over and had him change it, Reverend Ross, but not soon enough, obviously.” He must have come up early. And he came alone! Bea felt she could accept responsiblity for his being led astray, “You’d better come along then, you’ll be a good lesson. The Supper isn’t until next Sunday.” Oh dear, he meant food, he didn’t bring food. “There’s nothing to feed you, though I expect Anna could scare you up something if you’re starving.” But he said alone, didn’t he? Did he? “Are you?”

Suddenly weak with hunger, George felt pots of coffee wash through his stomach, “I can’t deny I’ve a hankering for a nice leg and a bit of breast, scalloped potatoes, apple pie.”

“You poor man, Anna doesn’t scare that well, I’m afraid. Cake night, too, she won’t have been near the stove, too busy polishing her crocks, it’s a ritual. I could feed you myself, but…” A man in her house on a Sunday after dark? When you can see right in the windows and the Lettie Girls could be on patrol and… “We’d really best get along to the manse before somebody comes out looking. Bob Ross’s handy enough with a sandwich, has to be, he can tide you over. There’ll be soup, Anna’s good with a tin.”

George was unbalanced. God knew why he’d worn town shoes with leather soles, he’d almost landed on his ass just climbing into the cruiser when he set out. God had known he couldn’t wear mildewed old mocassins to a church do, but then God should’ve known he had the wrong weekend. Shouldn’t He? It’s a worry, I’m just not as alert as I used to be. Bend your knees a bit and put each foot down flat, the dew’s like grease on the grass. It’s the details, I’m slipping on the details, got the pants and the jacket and shirt and tie right, but not so smart about the shoes. To think there was a day when any old boots’d do; walk, kick, run like hell and then go dancing till the band went home. Now I’ve got to plant each foot like a tulip bulb to keep me off my ass. I wish I had a stick. Take her arm. No, she’ll think I think she’s an old woman needs help. She’ll think you’re the one needs a boyscout. I’m going to have to start carrying a stick. You’ll really be old. A swagger stick. Yah, sure.

Bea stumped through the fitful dark of dim village light and tossing evergreens, her fists jammed into sweater pockets, one hand clutching the key, and damned herself for still wearing the frumpy thing, its maroon and grey machined pattern the very essence of old goat, after all these years it should’ve had a decent burial. I must look a sight. At least she wasn’t in her suede pumps with the bit of a heel, bad enough in her lace-up Cloud Soles, she didn’t need to slither into his arms off a wet maple leaf. D’ you suppose they don’t take arms in the city anymore? You don’t see it much on tv, except they’re young and it’s more than arms they’ve got a hold of. Get a grip, you’ll be necking in the church porch if you don’t get straight across this lawn right now! Through the trees and onto the porch and right into Anna’s kitchen with Lizzie Preston’s husband – Oh God!

I might as well’ve phoned Velma and given myself up the minute he hit my dock. It’s only a matter of time, three days and she’ll have a cross raised. Just in time for the meeting. Well, heck, you know, I might as well be hung for the sheep. And Beatrice laid three fingers on George’s handy arm.

Ignored in an unlit alcove, the front door of the Arlen was tight in its long-settled frame, and so little used, parking out behind, that the back door was more the front and the front the back, dank and lonesome except for Joe Snow telling a chair about the monster buck he’d once shot, had once been. And so, the sudden heavy scrape and drag of the opening door turned heads in the bar when Martin, doubt screaming from every nerve end, hauled on the rusted knob and prodded Katherine before him into the dark wet stench of beer, and god knows, probably blood-drenched ozite.

“Now there…” Sam turned from watching Paul rack balls as Katherine strode in pumped with the irritation of Martin’s dragging fumble behind her. “…that there,” Sam stretched himself up the length of his cue, flexed his spine, tossed his braid, “…that is a nice piece of ass!” Paul, bent at the waist to gently lift the frame, saw the pyramid of reds blurr in a split-moment of adrenal gush, before raising his head. Faint hope, Sam was facing the bar, and despite the unlikely circumstances, Paul recognized Katherine right away. He supposed it was the fringe on her cowpoke jacket, there’d been fringe on her dress Friday night. Shit, she’s a stomper, I’ll bet she’s got skinny cigars to smoke upside shots of whisky. What in the name of Sweet Jesus is she doing here? Oh Christ, that dickweed, Martin, too! What are they doing here? Paul almost stepped forward to ask, then thought he’d maybe wait and see.

Katherine made it to the bar, slapped a hand to the gouged pine, “Bourbon, rocks, Jack, if you got it.” And waited till the barman set it before her, “Oh, did you want a drink, too, Martin?” Paying him back for pushing her forward.

Watching her fish a flat tin from her bag, slit its seal with a thumbnail, caress thick foil and slip a rich black twig of cigar through her fingers, Martin shrank inside his clothes, hoping the cold sweat bathing his body wouldn’t soak through and blow his cool. As much as he wanted, needed, a great big vodka and tonic, he wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction. “Gimme a Blue.” Thinking he’d managed that rather well from the bottom of his throat, he snapped his lighter to her cigar and leaned into the bar with what he hoped was style.

Paul’s rush of surprise had ebbed to unease and he found himself backing further into the gloom of the short passage past the washrooms to the open back door.

Sam breaking and running his way through the balls in a grandstanding flurry aimed at attracting attention from the bar, spurred Brad to think he’d best take a leak before things got any more interesting than they already were, and his lazy lounging up from the table allowed him a good look at the strangers in town.

Katherine thought the hard little blond, all boots and blue jeans rising from a chair, wasn’t half bad, “Nice.” She nudged Martin with a stiff elbow.

“That’s a shag!” Martin eyed her from his shoulder with disgust.

“So, maybe that’s the local style, Marty, just the way your little bob is back home. D’ you think?” Her tone told him to watch his mouth, “Anyway, it’s not the hair I’m looking at. Nice little bow-legged walk he’s got there,” Watching him amble toward the back past a pool table, “If it’s nice hair you want so bad, check the size of the braid on Chingasckook over there.”

Sam could feel the heat of eyes on his back, only to be expected from a looker like that, and he swung the butt of his cue at Brad’s passing knees, “She’s hot for it, Brat, she wants my Indian club.”

Dodging the cue automatically, Brad peered at the dimness and asked, “What’d you do with Paul?”

Noticing, Sam shook his head, “Huh, probably cruisin’ the pisser. But hey, I’m serious, she wants me, I can feel it.”

Just for irritation’s sake, “Who wants you, Sam?”

“The one just came in, y’ little skink, she can’t take her eyes off me.”

“I don’t know, Sam, I think she’s pointin’ you out to her boyfriend there, who looks a little tight in the jeans, if you ask me. What I’m thinkin’, she’s one of those truck-drivin’ women, if you know what I mean, Sammy, and they just mamboed into the wrong bar. But hey, I gotta take a leak and I could be wrong. You keep droppin’ your balls and I’ll go hunt Paul.” Ducking a glare and a swinging cue, Brad headed for the men’s room.

Little bugger’s gettin’ scrappy. It’s what happens when Magarry’s around with that smart lip, everybody starts actin’ a little queer. She’s lookin’. She’s lookin’. Sam arched and flowed with the fluid strike of a marten, and pumping, jabbed up through the colours to black, and chalked and walked to the other end to set the woman in the foresight of his finger-bridge and stroked it down.

Brad slapped open the men’s room door in accepted practice, a good loud bounce off the wall tiles preventing any suggestion of lewd and sneaky intent, and although he believed Sam’s perception largely hyperbolic, he wasn’t prepared to discover Paul in any compromising position. There was only Joe Snow telling a urinal about the bear who took his ear and kept it under a rock in her den. Brad pissed and spoke the litany, “Which ear’d she get, Joe?”

Joe took a hand from the urinal to touch his left ear, “This.” And waited for the response of disbelief. The tale of retrieval was often worth a draught. But Brad had paid for the epic of belly-ripped hounds, the marathon chase, any number of times; he’d admired old Clara Snow’s fine mocassin stitching on the clever flap of dry hide, had ordered rounds and wondered, as everyone did, which parts of the tale were real.

Brad jumped to the conclusion, “Good thing your old lady was handy with a needle, Joe.” Zipped, he clapped Joe’s shoulder in a manly way and went looking for Paul. Joe chuckled and nodded and waited for the beer to come.

Having wandered out into the parking lot for thinking space, before proximity could force him to acknowledge Katherine and Martin, Paul considered walking away off down the highway, but the crisp autumn air crept round his collar and his cigarettes were back at the table in his jacket pocket. He kicked at the gravel, rubbed his arms and willed himself to wait patiently for rescue. Maybe the sight of Sam rattling his balls would scare them off. Then again…

What are they doing here? Of all the godforsaken backends of nowhere, how’d they find the Arlen Hotel? Paul felt pursued. But why her? Why him? I’d believe the Bitch Preston hunting me down, she’d exhume you, if she wasn’t finished slapping you. But why these guys, why her? If she thinks that fiasco was my fault, she’s nuts, it wasn’t my party. They’re not following you, you’re paranoid. Oh, yah, sure. Oh fuck, it can’t be him on my tail, can it? He doesn’t even know he wants it. Paul fired another stone off the toe of his shoe and shivered, his only hope was Sam’s obnoxious behaviour.

Brad heard the chuck of a foot in the gravel followed by a whack on dull metal and spotted Paul the other side of a battered half ton. “I wouldn’t let Big Harv catch me wingin’ rocks at his vehicle, if I was you. She may be nine-tenths bondo and chicken wire, but Harv keeps her for love, not looks.” Face tipped to the sky, Brad ambled around potholes by instinct, his fingers busy in pockets for cigarettes and lighter. He tilted his chin at a pale blob of moon melting in a shallow sky. “Thank god she’s dyin’, Sam’s twice the hell when she’s full.” He offered his pack and held out a light.

“Still, eh?” Paul eyed the moon while the smoke slowed his breath and his skin settled down to accepting the cold, “Sammy always went a bit wolf with the moon. Claimed his dick grew hair that needed washing in the juice of virgins. God, he’s twisted! I remember one year we were in highschool I lent him a Mary Renault, one of her goat-god hair-turners; he read the dirty bits and spent every full moon running around the brush up top the Eagle’s Nest, chasing Marylou Oakley till she pooped out and let him do the rude thing on that big knuckle of rock right out at the edge. He wouldn’t wear anything but an old Davy Crockett coonskin cap. Marylou said he was gross and wore her bikini.

“I was supposed to be in on it with him, in charge of research. Meant I had to read all the books and find the dirty parts. And I was supposed to recruit maenads for him, wood nymphs – he kept calling them nymphos – and teach ‘em some kind of ritual that’d whip ‘em into a frenzy, all wild for sacrifice on Sammy’s sword.” Paul paused for a drag and laughed out the smoke, “Jesus, what a flaming ego! I couldn’t ever get him to pay attention to the story-lines of those mystery religions – whose heart it was got ripped out and eaten. None of the other girls wanted to catch Marylou’s reputation, so the two of them howled around on their own till the road froze up and she refused to walk it.” Paul stooped for a stone and winged it high out of the lot, “I went up once. Took your sister.”

“Mars?!” Brad couldn’t help the dismay, “And you?”

“Yup, Marcy and me. I think she went along ‘cause she knew me better than I did. She’s a good one, your sister, she was my best friend, better than Sam was, safer, anyway. Lots of things we didn’t have to talk about, she just knew. I always figured she went ‘cause she knew I had to and I couldn’t do it alone, shouldn’t, maybe. I think she knew how much I wanted Sam and worried I’d be the one, the sacrifice with the ripped out heart. Marcy always thought Sam was more silly than dangerous, but she didn’t trust the mean streak in Marylou, so she said she’d go along and we wouldn’t have to do anything we didn’t want to. She and I could run around and bay at the moon, maybe ambush Marylou, spook Sam. She probably wanted to chase bare-ass over those rocks after Sam as much as I did, but she went with me, she went for my sake and she stuck with me.

“And we did strip down. Sat in the car and thought about it without saying a word, ‘cause I just looked at her and she opened her door same time I did. And we both laughed because it was your mother’s Beetle and we could both see right over the top. We went into the bush with the width of the car between us and kept it there, running for the hell of it. We jumped and swung from branches like little kids, and when we heard a howl above us through the trees, we thought the pack was on us and grabbed each other…” Paul considered the sky again, “Kind of like this, milky, but full. The two of us just wired for the magic fuck of all time, naked as jays, except for my old moccs and your sister in… what d’y’callums? …espadrilles, she was so proud of those things, real Mexican, …and there we were wrapped together like a cabbage roll,” Erupting in a snort of disgust, Paul used a knuckle to check for residue, “I remember thinking I was seriously sick and twisted for imagining a cabbage roll with my meat in the middle. And then we knew it was Sam, up there nailing Marylou one more time, and Marcy and I just sort of unrolled and said how cold it was, and then we went to Hing’s for coffee.”

“Mars, eh? Streakin’ the Eagle’s Nest with you and Sam. Wow!”

“She always knew when to stop. Better than the rest of us ever did, no matter how crazy it got. Acid on the band bus, MDA, Southern Comfort, sex in the church, all of it, she always knew when to walk. And when she didn’t like it anymore, she was gone.”

“Mars, eh?” Brad shook his head and his soft smile turned lonesome and he looked to the ground, “She could come back, now Old Bruce’s gone.”

Paul took advantage, “I need you to help me with Sam.” Brad’s look came up skeptical, puckering with disappointment. “No, no, not that! I just told you I stopped trying that night up the Eagle’s Nest. You’re not a good listener.” Brad blinked and rattled his head. Paul grinned, “I’m sure that’s what I said. Anyway, what I need is to sic Sam on that pair that came in the front door,” Answering a quizzical eyebrow, “I know them, but I don’t know why they’re here and I don’t want to deal with it. Sam has to spook ‘em out of here fast as he can. I can’t believe they’re following me, but I don’t know how the hell else they’d find this place. It’s got to be coincidence. I just don’t need it. I don’t want to know. You‘ve got to get Sam to do it. Please.”

“You in trouble?”

“I sure as fuck hope not,” He said on a deep sigh that turned into a splutter of exasperation, “Fucking people! Bad enough when they’re tryin’ to get at you, you know they’re out there, you can turn off the lights and hide on the floor, but this shit… Fuckers just walk in and catch you with your fly down on a bad-hair day.”

“They’re following you, but it’s an accident they found you?”

“I don’t know. It’s probably an accident they’re following me.”

Brad closed one eye and cocked his head to aim the other, “I don’t think I follow you.”

“Smart ass.” Paul raised a fist in mock threat. “She’s Katherine Bailey. She’s a painter. He’s Martin… something, I don’t remember, he’s like her agent. They’re the reason I’m back here.” He spoke in a rush ahead of a bloom of nausea rolling up out of his gut, and he turned in time to barely miss Brad’s boots with a sour stream of beer and rye and bile. “Jesus wept!” Paul spat and fought his gorge, “Sorry.” He scrabbled in his pockets. Brad stepped to the fence, snatched up a couple of burdock leaves, slapped them for dust and offered them.

“Thanks,” Paul wiped his mouth, the leaf hairs scouring and tickling, “I don’t know what that’s about.” He dabbed at a wet spot on his left knee, inspected his toes.

Brad figured it was probably about hard liquor on an empty stomach, but he needed facts, “Are they queer? She looks a little… you know.”

A snort and a chuckle and Paul tossed the dock leaves into the bed of Harv’s truck. He waffled a hand in the air, “She just got dumped by her husband – friend of mine, worked with him once, a group home, another thing I did – anyway, he moved out on her. I don’t know, maybe she is. I heard she was wearin’ his clothes, but the other one, Marty the Agent Guy, dipshit’s definitely a sissy, but I only met him the other night and I don’t know if he knows yet he’s queer. He was passed out in a cheese tray last I saw him.” Paul giggled, his fingers pantomimed a request for another cigarette, “She was wearing a painting at the time.” Accepting a smoke and a light, his humour faded to concern, “I only know they’re trouble, they’re why I’m here. It’s what I was sayin’ back at Sam’s, bunch of women raised hell and I left town.”

“Yah, I remember you sayin’, before Salmon started goin’ on about himself, as usual. So, let me get this straight; it’s not you and him, and it’s not you and her either. Not a sex thing, right?”

“Right.”

“So…” Brad cupped his hands to encourage more.

“All I know is I stood up for her against one major bitch,” The memory of murderous fury in Elizabeth Preston’s eyes coursed a shudder down his back, “Opened my big mouth and you wouldn’t believe what happened. Very possibly blew away her career,” He whistled a falling missile, “Might be why she’s here, lookin’ to blow me away.” Fingers poked into the waist of his jeans, Paul paced three steps out and three steps back, “You might not believe it, but Friday night was every bit as nuts as Orange Day is around here when Uncle Jimmy looses that stupid pack of hounds under the horse, a major fuckin’ disaster. Those people don’t have to carry clubs, they are clubs. A reception in a bank, yet, and believe it or not, out comes the knife. Doesn’t matter, best scotch, best nibbles, worst behaviour I’ve ever seen. Last straw, far as I’m concerned, people think they can buy the right to be assholes, I might as well come back here where they’re free.” Pausing to take aim, Paul scuffed another rock at the pickup.

Though Big Harv and his boys would always accomodate, Brad didn’t feel up to a blood-bath, surely there was a subtler solution, a way out of Paul’s dilemma with a more interesting angle, given the strangers and all, “Is Sam…” He wiggled his hands, unsure of how to say, “Has he ever… You know, done queer stuff?” If he could get enough facts, there might be a way out of this. Anyway, they say information’s power, eh.

“Whew!” Startled, Paul stopped his pacing to eye Brad up and down, “Despite my personal slavering fantasies, to the best of my knowledge, no. I always really figured he’s probably good for the missionary position for about three minutes, slam and bam, as it were, why he’s always lookin’ for more. Critically speaking, not much use in him bein’ queer, not to me, anyway. But, you know, he’s always thought he’s blessed with a golden cock, so he might’ve gone for glory in an uncommon hole once or twice. Never know with Sam, he can be squeamish. You don’t want him hearin’ you talk like that, he will rope you to your tailpipe.” Paul thought to be coy for the fun of it, “You got experience to the contrary? Reason to ask?”

“No!” Brad flushed, “I mean I’m just wonderin’, if you want Sam to chase ‘em off, he’s gonna need a reason.”

“He doesn’t need a reason to be the ignorant hard-on he always is.”

“Not him, you, I mean, you need a reason to get him to do it, something that won’t take all night to explain to him. He’s so righteous lately you’ve gotta give him chapter and verse on every situation, or he thinks you’re settin’ him up, treatin’ him like you think he’s just some dumb Injun, and he gets all ornery and there’s no talkin’ to Mister First Nation.”

“Shit! Why can’t we just leave? You and me, we could just go. He can make out on his own. Take me into town, you can always come back and get him, if you want. I need out of here. Please.”

“Don’t you want to know what they’re doin’ here? Even if it is accidental you’re here and they’re here, how come they’re here? Don’t you want to find out before Salmon puts the run on ‘em? Anyway, you can’t just bugger off ‘cause of them, you belong here.”

“No I don’t.”

“Sure you do.”

“No, I don’t!” But he did, of course, had no choice at the moment, still, he didn’t need to compound that problem by connecting it to these people, strangers really, who’d effectively stuck him with this situation in the first place. He didn’t even want to have to know Brad and Sam, or anybody else here, where Brad was so sure he belonged. What am I supposed to do, introduce ‘em to each other? Redneck, meet… What, City Woman? No, ladies first, so what… Ms. Paintress meet Fundamental Erectus? Closet Case meet Big Harv and the boys? Oh sure, and then we can segué right in to the stompin’ and the scalpin’. “I think I’ll just go sit in your car.”

“Ah, come on, eh,” Brad tried a wheedling grin, “We gotta make our own fun around here, there’s fuckall to see on the satellite. Besides, if you don’t help there could be trouble.”

“You know damned well there’s going to be trouble no matter what I do. Sam’s trouble, she’s trouble, little Marty’s trouble, shit, you’re just makin’ trouble. I’d rather eat my own leg.”

“Well, you can take that attitude if you want, but I’d like to know what the hell else you’re gonna do around here. You just gonna hole up with your old lady? You gotta go out for cigarettes sometime. You want the little kids to point at you, say you’re the weirdo lives with his mother? Hey, I know that crap. Part of the reason I hang out with Salmon, shuts ‘em up when I’m out playin’ with that mean motherfucker. D’ y’ see?”

“What I see’s a Heritage Moment, the Arlen Massacree, birchbark pickups and tire iron tomahawks.”

“You wish.”

“Hah, y’ little brat, you’re right. I wish.” Paul hummed in wry agreement, “It isn’t really that at all, it’s the idea of them all standing around understanding each other. If I hear one more biker say the word beaujolais, I’ll chew his throat out. I don’t want to know more people!”

“Yah, but you can’t really mean that, man.” In a drawl that almost whined, Brad cast again.

“I can so. Let ‘em waste each other, better than wastin’ my time.”

“You could be doin’ it for Marcy’s sake,” He was determined to set the hook, “She kept you from gettin’ hurt up the Eagle’s Nest, maybe you owe her.”

“You weasel! The fuck’s this got to do with your sister?”

“Hey, man,” A big shrug of the shoulders, a wave of indifference, “You don’t see the payback, you don’t see it.”

A long look, a slow smile of resignation and Paul nodded, “Where’d you learn to twist arms so well?”

“Been watchin’ you guys all my life.” Hands in his butt pockets, Brad rocked his body between Paul and the dull light of the Arlen’s backdoor, “Listen, what’d y’ say we tell Sam it’s a set-up right from the start, but it’s you set it up for him ‘cause she’s after his body. You know her from the city and you told her about him, Leaping Salmon, old Trouser Trout, all that shit, the Legend of Sammy Salmon, and she’s tracked him to the waterin’ hole, whatever. See, it’ll save us time not havin’ to convince him it’s not a set-up…”

“Yes, I can see that.” Paul was dry. “So, they’re at the watering hole, and…?”

“Uum… Sam’ll probably go into his cornball, mystic Indian shaman shit, play hard to get. It’s what he does, completely pretends he’s just too pure in the ways of the braves to be after gettin’ laid. Never seen one didn’t fall for it, oldest act in the book, and old Sam can keep it up for so long as it takes for her to make a move and then he’s on her like Jack the Bear. He goes silent Injun on her and she’ll talk, man, she’ll talk at him till she finally says she wants it. And that way we’ll find out why she’s here!”

“Except for the fact that I didn’t tell her about Sam, that she’s never heard of him, or very likely has the least interest in a complete dickhead like Sam, you’ve got a great plan, ‘cause that’s exactly how he’ll behave. But what the hell, who knows? Except for being a hunk, her husband’s nothing like Sam, but I don’t know, there’s the old rebound thing, I guess.”

“Look, if she’s out with this Marty guy and you think he’s queer, then maybe it means she’s out on the prowl, if she just got dumped. Some of them can’t do without it, you know.”

“What d’ y’ mean them, Kemosabe? Speaking of Marty, the hairball in the closet, what about him? He’s just the kind of asshole to fluff out his chest hairs at Sam and Harv and jump up and down on their insteps before they turn him into a handbag.”

“How be if we say he’s an old boyfriend of yours?” Brad almost flinched from the stab of Paul’s eyes, “Well, just a drunken one nighter, not even that, just a quickie in a… Well, we don’t have to say. If you say boyfriend, Sam might scuff up his nice yellow boots, but he won’t thump him.”

“I might like to thump him, myself.” Feeling a sudden cold slap of resentment, Paul snapped up straight, “No, to hell with that! I don’t want anybody thinkin’ that dweeb’s ever been any boyfriend of mine. No, no, no!”

“All right, all right! We’ll tell Sam…… He’s an agent! You said he’s an agent. Remember? Is he? Pictures. So, what’s Sam know? We’ll say he’s a movie agent! Bingo! Lookin’ for talent, scoutin’ for talent, scoutin’ for scouts! Indian stars for heritage moments, yah, lookin’ for the Legend. If he thinks they’re both after his ass, he’ll go so far into mode… Wow! Move over Jimmy Dean. Hello Hollywood!” Resting a hand on Paul’s shoulder, Brad steered for the dull yellow light.

More personality than character, was George Preston’s judgement of the Reverend Robert Ross. Mind you, he was grateful Bob Ross wasn’t a post-modern Man o’ God forever winkling apt little homilies on life’s blessings out of every topic of conversation with all the expertise of a B.A. in sociology and none of the poetry of two thousand years of impassioned metaphysics. On the contrary, the Reverend seemed an old-pattern divine. George wasn’t too sure, he suspected there might once have been fantasies of a Trollope archdeacon – he could imagine pretensions to a black shovel hat in the thin, high-bridged nose – but the badly knitted waistcoat and the undisguised pleasure at the sight of company suggested a Pym vicar, or a friend of Miss Marple, certainly there was little appertaining to salvation and much to suit the small pleasures of an undemanding pastorate.

The punchbowl, for instance, a chased silver dish that could have been an extravagant porringer, or a lawn-bowling trophy, which was introduced, alongside a boiled kettle, a pair of lemons, a little wooden box of dried spice and a small jar of clear honey, on one worn, oil-clothed end of Anna’s kitchen table. That punchbowl wasn’t really, George didn’t think, standard religious practice. Drinks, well sure, the clergy liked a highball. He knew a bishop who thrived on margaritas, whole teaching-orders with better cellars than sense, and he’d never met a minister with a line in the lake on a hot summer’s day who’d say no to an old cold beer. But the crushing of cloves, shaving of cinnamon, slicing of lemons, brewing of hot water and honey definitely didn’t interface with the anorexic social life he was accustomed to. In consequence, George was charmed.

Anna had tittered out of the gloom of a high-boarded pantry in the far end of the rackety kitchen for introductions. A swath of muslin in one hand, a heavy pair of steel scissors in the other, a look of expectant worry on her tapered, mole-shaped face, she had managed several nods and a repeating murmur, although George noticed that her eyes avoided focus and her busy lips never opened. Waving her laden hands in excuse, snuffling a special murmur at Bea, Anna escaped back to the chore in hand. Bea glanced at the men, lingered for an imperceptible sigh and followed to assist, “I’ll go help with the shrouds.”

“I wouldn’t have thought her a nautical woman, our Beatrice.” Robert Ross made the bad joke to cover his affection for the one woman in the village who was kind to his wife. His opinion that she still had a good pair of legs was confirmed by George’s following eye.

“Well, I just met her on a dock, I don’t know whether that makes her nautical or professional.” George winced, appalled by his own worse joke. You’re a sexist pig, she’s a good woman, this man’s a priest and you’re gross. Couldn’t resist, it was too easy. You’re a profoundly shallow man. Unhuh. “That was unnecessary, I should apologize to her, and I certainly do to you. It was cheap.”

“Oh, not that much cheaper than mine. Rather more brass, perhaps. Are you a sailor, then?”

“Guess not, I plowed into her dock in the dark, looking to tie up back of the Hardware.” George heard the John Waynish tone tumble from his tongue and couldn’t stop himself, “Came downriver for the Church Supper, Reverend.”

“Oh Dear Lord!” Bob Ross appeared genuinely anguished, “You’re my fault! She said it would happen. She warned me. I changed the sign, but too late, obviously, too late! I do apologize, Mister Preston, I do. I sincerely hope you haven’t enormously inconvenienced yourself because of my foolishness. But you have! You’ve hurt yourself, have you? No? Well, that’s good luck. And the boat, is it drowned? Just a bump? Lucky again! And Bea’s dock, it survived? Oh, bad luck!”

George switched from a shake to a nod, “You might say. Tore off a good piece. Totaled, I expect. Offered to put her in a new one, but so far she says no. Says it was past its time, no proper footings, no steel, just cedar and rock cribs, all rotten. I’ll pull it out for her, at least. Should’ve been done long ago.”

Robert Ross was a professional listener, and since there wasn’t a whole lot to do in the way of parish business, he was good at it. He was quite sure he had a horny old man in his kitchen. “You’re handy then, are you?” Though he didn’t really think the man looked it.

“At the moment I’m up at…” George was distracted. My god, it is up! I’m horny. Well, not up, but heavy. Son-of-a-gun, what brought this on? Handy? I used to be damned handy with… Stop it! Back to the matter in hand. Hah! Hand. STOP IT! “I’m up on the lake.” Will it still be up… can I keep it up? Why? You’re not twelve. Oh, for godsake! “Came up yesterday morning.” It did too, didn’t it? That’s what started this whole business, rolling on to Elizabeth first thing yesterday morning. That was rare and foolish. That was a piss hard-on, but it was worth a try. No it wasn’t. Probably what this is. Oh no, this’s blood, I can make it move. You piss your pants, you’re going to look a damned fool. Change the subject.

“What exactly is your wife doing with all that cloth?” George made himself see the heavy old, black-handled, long, thick-bladed shears that Anna had dangled from one hand. That helped. “I take it that’s a shroud, or will be, but what exactly is it that’s in need of a shroud? Since I assume we’re not really talking boats here.” And George pictured a cadaver, flaccid, livid, laid out on a pantry shelf. Gone down.

“Her cakes, she anoints her fruit cakes, wraps them up in a winding sheet and awaits the Coming of The Child.” There, that’s better. The flush of blood appearing to drain from his guest’s face, the Reverend felt a little safer. He didn’t need some mad old bull with a priapic problem stumbling over the crockery. He didn’t feel up to defending the womenfolk and he’d neglected to get a refill of his nitro tabs, had only one left, so he was glad for both their sakes that he wouldn’t have to make a Christian choice. “I was wondering, though, if you’re handy with a hammer, carpentry. Are you a marine contractor, or something, a builder? It’s late to be up on the lake.”

“Oh.” The man means useful. At the moment, no. What he means is: Who are you? What d’ you do? And why are you here? I know that. He’s being indirect. He’s being kind, he probably thinks you’re some kind of con artist. D’ you think so? Just answer the man. “No, I have to admit I’ve never been much use with my hands. Though I had a light touch with a joystick once, but I think that was more nerve and gut than hand and eye. And since then there’s usually been someone to do it for me.”

George expected that that sounded conceited, pompous, but he found himself struck by a sudden desire to avoid saying, ‘I’m a banker. I’m the Very Active Chairman of the Imperial Trust. A Modern Major-General.’ Certainly it was his role to announce himself, modestly, of course, with pride in The Institution. He was a leader, after all, up-front, nothing held back, no reason for hesitation, nothing shady here, TRUST ME. His job was confidence, not handicraft. But at the moment he didn’t care, he wished he was handy with a hammer. He was sure the Reverend Ross wouldn’t be any less agreeable. You can’t lie. I’m a banker. You can’t lie. “Mister Ross, have you ever spanked your wife?”

Startled, George didn’t know why he’d just decided to retire from his career, but he recognized that he had. It wasn’t a responsible thought, not even sensible, so he didn’t want to think about it right away, he wanted to let it lie still, see what it felt like. He thought it best to confess to something else and do a little time for it, “I spanked my wife yesterday morning and then I ran away up here. I’ve never done that before.”

“Which, run away, or spanked your wife?”

“Either.”

“Did you hurt her?”

“Her pride, certainly, but maybe a whole lot worse. I knew the minute I did it, it had never happened to her before. I don’t know what she’ll do. It’s why I came away, really, give her time to decide. I lost control and I’m ashamed of myself. I figure I can only get control of myself with reason, and I’m afraid I’d reason her right into deserving the spanking, and I can’t do that. After all the years I’ve put up with her as she is, I can’t start manipulating my wife just because I’m losing my grip. Can I?”

The vicar heaved a sigh and wished his wife would hurry up with the rum, “I’ve never been able to handle mine, either. They do as they like, don’t they? Can’t deny I’ve thought of spanking, but I wouldn’t dare, she’s not much of a cook as it is. And, of course, I do have to consider physical discipline from the pious angle – sanctity of the human spirit, inviolability of the person, assault causing bodily harm, the science of feminism, Mother Earth and Missus God – denying spontaneity, requiring an appointment for consent, and quite often in need of special clothing. But I wander. What of reason? You said you were afraid she might find reason from you. You believe you had reason?”

“Oooh yes,” George drew on the vowels. “Don’t you know my wife? Elizabeth Everett, she comes from here originally. Her father farmed around here, though she doesn’t admit to it.”

“Before my time, I expect, but my wife, she would…” The Reverend was startled by the darting reappearance of his wife, hands wiping at a tea towel, closely followed by Bea bearing the rum bottle. Offering fingers smelling sharply of spirits, woe and pity in her eyes, Anna spoke to George in a hoarse whisper, “I didn’t know, Mister Preston, I didn’t know.” Her lips snapped and quivered over little moans of sorrow, “Beatrice tells me you’re married to Lizzie Everett and you hit her dock…”

“Bea’s dock, dear,” The Reverend was afraid his wife had slipped into one of her confusions, or possibly the rum fumes, “Mister Preston’s wife is from around here, apparently she…”

“Yes, dear, I know that, it’s a wonder he’s not killed, his life won’t have been easy.” She flicked a worried look at George, “It wasn’t a… you weren’t trying to… do away… It’s a cry for help, isn’t it?”

“Anna!”

Bea had had to give Anna the goods on George Preston in a potted version not because she felt the need to edit her recent encounter with the man, and his wife, and her own daughter, and her mother, and the godawful disaster, and… well, perhaps a little trimming. No, Bea had given Anna a reduced concentrate of facts because she knew that Anna couldn’t save herself from Velma Lettie’s curiosity, an inquisitiveness that left thumb-screws unneeded, and Bea had long ago learned that Anna suffered less, the less she knew.

So, in fact, Bea had only managed to say, in a very low voice necessitated by the high-ceilinged, wooden sound-box of a pantry, that she’d only just met Mister Preston two days, evenings, really, ago, “In public, of course, in a bank. A reception. Hundreds of guests. I was a guest. They’ve redone the bank, a lovely job. Katherine had a picture up. Mother was there. In the bank. In the city. His bank.” And then tonight he’d hit her dock in the dark. “Dark so early! An accident, certainly. Not hurt, just a bump. Dock’s so rotten, doesn’t matter, never used it. Anna, he’s married to Lizzie Everett!”

Anna had been there when Bessie, calling herself Liz, had come home from Havergal with her schoolgirl snottyness, had taken one look at Bea’s handsome new husband and announced to her acquaintances (her friends were selected from very good homes elsewhere), announced to the Letties, to Anna herself, that the poor gorgeous hunk had obviously been tricked by that sappy Bea Sutherland pretending to be preggers. Anna had known that Bea really was pregnant, though just enough to be sure and not showing.

Daughter of the Hardware, granddaughter of the Hardware, Anna had always been there, pinched, meek, devoted to her flute, which had been thought good treatment for her asthmatic wind, and devoted to Bea, who was always a year older, ever so much braver, and the only person who had ever confided in her. Lizzie Everett had been malicious merely for the fun of it, Anna had been horrified, sure she’d somehow leaked the secret, and when Bea’s husband had disappeared shortly after the birth, Anna had suffered more than Bea, who at least hadn’t also believed she’d betrayed her only friend.

“Anna, he’s married to Lizzie Everett!” Anna’d gone cold, the big bottle of Lamb’s Navy with which she’d been dampening her stack of muslin squares, having corked it with the sprinkler-head from her laundry bottle, the rum almost slipped from her fingers. But Bea, alert to the effect of her words, caught the bottle by the neck and patting at the knuckles Anna had clapped to her mouth, said “Breathe.”

Anna opened her throat, opened her lungs, and fear ebbed on a new breath, to surge anew in euphoric rage. That silken cunt, she won’t make me talk this time! Whatever it is, I won’t tell. Bea mustn’t tell me anything, “Don’t say another word!” She snatched up a tea towel, “The poor man,” and headed back out. She wasn’t going to let another one get chased off.

Bob Ross stared at his wife, blinked and shook his head. How the woman’s mind works, I do not know. Or if, sometimes, I think. I like her, but she’s nuts. “Anna, what on earth makes you think the man needs help? He’s quite all right. Unfortunately, he came tonight for the Supper. It’s all my fault, really, if I’d not been foolish with the signboard, none of this would’ve happened.”

“Speaking of supper,” Bea thought it best to distract Anna, “I kind of said you might be able to whip up a toasted cheese, or something simple. I think the poor man’s starving, though he’s too nice to say so. I’d have fed him, but…” she tipped her head and pursed her lips, “You know.” She touched a hand to Anna’s shoulder and turned her to the pantry, “I can do it, if you tell me what.”

“And if we could have the rum, my dear! If you’ve finished with it. Have you? Yes? Good. Not quite? Soon? Yes. Our guests could join us in a lovely bowl of punch, my dear, hot and refreshing and surely a necessary antidote to all of this dreadful trauma.” The Reverend didn’t feel up to any more confessions just at the moment, and counseling was seven to nine Tuesday and Thursday, in the office off the vestry, the chill and no tea kept people from hanging about. There was something of irritation in his voice as he watched the rum go back to the pantry, “We need a little something against the shock, I think, we wouldn’t want… uh, George, to catch a chill, now would we?”

George was thoroughly bemused. Anna Ross seemed to think marriage to Elizabeth to be just cause for… well, seemingly, she thought it just cause for suicide, and her husband, clattering his kettle and condiments about on the table, seemed to be in desperate need of a drink. He watched the Reverend check the heat of his kettle and return it to the stove. And this Bea… What is it, a Mac something or other, a Mc? We were introduced at the reception… not MacDonald, though she’s not bad in the arches department. Mac A, something. I should remember, I’m good at names, part of the job, but not MacKay, no, and the mother… Where’s she? Does she live here too? She introduced herself… Sutherland! Yes, Tillie Sutherland, and Bea Mc… What? McAlpine!

Yes, you remembered it on her dock, George, when you first saw her in the light. Oh, did I? Yes, and what about her anyway? Oh, well, she seems… I suppose she told this Anna, about Elizabeth’s escapade the other night. Must’ve been some story, she’s got no reason to be kind. I’m surprised I’m not tarred with the same brush, she must be a damned forgiving woman, good-looking, too, and she seems a bit saner than the other two do. Speaking of sanity, why did you tell him you spanked her? Never mind now. “So, d’ you like the church game… Bob? Robert? Which d’ you prefer?”

If all that’s here meets the eye, I’ll eat my collar, but the women seem to want to keep him, feed him, even, so it’s not for me to throw him back. Yet. “Well, I was Bob as a boy, Robert as a young man with ambitions, and I’m still that to people who care for that sort of thing – my wife, when she has to mention me, the Bishop, when he’s working – but I’ve found I don’t mind coming back around to being Bob, among friends it helps with the stiffness of the collar. And yes, I like the church game, as you say. Not the wardens and the pew fights, but I like having the authority to encourage cooperation. Even when people don’t, they know they should, and that’s half the job right there. If there is any sort of Hereafter, one is certainly not going to improve one’s chances by being disagreeable.

“Ah, here comes the necessary at last,” as Bea, slipping from the pantry, sidled to the table and deposited the rum bottle in an imitation of stealth, Bob Ross gave her a wink and reached for a spoon and the jar, “And I’ve still honey to melt! Thank you, Beatrice, thrice blessed,” and to her retreating back, “I believe there’s a can or two of that Maneater soup, or whatever it is, in the tin cupboard back there. She mightn’t think to look.” And he poured honey into his silver bowl and caught it with his spoon.

“She’s quite the woman.” It was all George could think to say, but the words carried the weight of his appreciation.

“She’s quite the woman.” Repeated as an affirmation, the words carried a lighter load of affection, “I’d be friendless in this church, without Bea.” Crushing the heads of cloves in his fingers, Bob Ross sprinkled the honey. “Well, perhaps not, but almost. She’s as proper as the rest of them, more so, if it comes to that, but she sees the silliness of people rather the way I do, and we share that. She doesn’t swear and she’s kind to my wife.” He trickled steaming water down the slope of the bowl, returned the kettle to the stove, floated chips of dry ginger and stirred figure-eights with a cinnamon stick.

“Beatrice is a blessing, and it never fails as a mystery to me why some fellow hasn’t wit enough to take her up on it. Mind you, I’d find that inconvenient, I’d not have the advantage of her, but that’s a selfish thought and it could lead to covetousness, so I’m just as pleased she’s as she is.”

“And just how is that?” George thought he felt, rather than heard, the lowing of a bull here, a placid bull, perhaps, but a bull all the same, “Is she widowed? I know she has a daughter, Katherine. I’ve met her.”

“Oh, have you now?” Not so simple after all!

“And her mother, Missus Sutherland. Tillie? Yes, a grand woman, I’ve met her as well.”

“Ah, have you now?” Well, this was certainly deeper than a bump in the dark. Bea’s dock was beginning to look deliberate; knocking it into matchwood might be accidental, but finding it…? “And where would this have been, then?”

“Oh. At a reception for…uh…” Some deep resistance to yet identifying himself diverted George, “…for a picture-hanging, for one of Katherine’s pictures. I met them… So, this whole business of running into Bea… into her dock, well… amazing!” His head bowed in a slow shake and a fond smile split into a grin, “Small world, eh? I get a hankering for a turkey leg and a piece of pie… and the next thing you know…” George found he couldn’t bear the pretense, “So, what became of the husband, McAlpine?”

Bob Ross found he was slapping his honey rather savagely round the bowl, made himself stop and take a deep breath of spiced steam. “Apparently, he went back West soon after Katherine was born. It was before my coming here and it’s never been my business to ask why, frankly, though it would certainly appear my wife could tell you. I do believe the marriage was never dissolved, and to the best of my knowledge he’s no older than the rest of us, so there’s every chance he’s still alive.” The Reverend snatched a nutmeg from his spice box. And Bea’s not just ripe for the plucking. Oh, Lord, did I say that aloud? He darted a look at George and went to hunt his grater. I don’t care if I did.

Exchanging nods and gathering breath at the door, Brad stepped into the circle of Sam’s cue and Paul aimed straight for the bar. Brad eased a hip against the table and spoke to the felt next Sam’s stick hand, “Hey, Sockeye, the dude at the bar’s a talent agent and the woman wants your body,” Not being told to get his goddam ass off the table meant he’d been heard, “That’s the word, anyway. Paul knows ‘em. He’s scoutin’ for braves and she’s all for casting your couch, my man.”

“I’m not your fuckin’ man,” Without raising his head, Sam stabbed one dark eye at Brad, “And we don’t do Sockeye, either. Remember that, Sweetpea? Or you’ll wear this stick in yer pants.” Sam snapped the cue in a jab that stood the white in a cracking spin and sent three reds to three pockets. “Of course they want the Indian.” Two banks, two reds. “They got money?” End bank, one drop, three more clear. “What the fuck does Paul know?”

“So, what?” Paul thought it best to open bidding from the top, “You want my balls before the Dragonlady gets ‘em? What the fuck are you doin’ in the Arlen Hotel?”

“ You! Holy shit! You! That’s it! It was you, wasn’t it? Who’s from up here. That’s why I thought of it. It was you!” Katherine’s jaw tightened. Jesus, what the hell’s his name? “It was you.” I’m sounding stupid! “And Martin! Yes, you remember Martin. Martin you remember…” Katherine managed the business of opening the circle, but timing failed her; Martin broke into a sweat that slipped her grasp and the jukebox stopped on a white-girl bluenote. She turned on an elbow, “Can I get another Jack over here!” Listened for a name behind, “Another double!” And turned, “You…”

“Paul.”

“I knew that.”

“So?”

“So. This is…uh…amazing! You’re here.”

“Well, no, not really, it’s pathetic, maybe, but what’s amazing is that you’re here. Not much point me hangin’ around after mouthing off to the Dragonlady, but I’d ‘ve thought you’d be stalking her with an Uzi.”

“Let’s not go there. Okay? Not now.” Katherine was sharp, but she saluted Paul with her glass, “We’re on holiday, that’s why we’re here. Aren’t we, Marty?” She tried to grab flannel and merely succeeded in slapping Martin’s tightly tucked belly, but it brought him around.

“Are you following us around making trouble?”

“I live here.”

Martin did a quick slow-take of the room back to a longer look at Paul, “Yes. Well, feel free, I’m sure it has it’s moments. How would you like to get me out of here alive? Do what you like with her, but save me. Okay? She’s done nothing but cause trouble since we left town. Since I met her. Tried to get me raped and murdered in Peterborough this afternoon. She’d be dead meat, if it wasn’t for me, a slimey cheeseburger oozing…”

“Shut up! Martin.”

“…hillbilly hormones and…”

“Was that your first big kiss then, Marty?” That worked, Martin’s lips snapped, Paul’s eyebrows rose, and reaching around, to pick up her new drink, and turning, Katherine toasted the air, “To Manooth. That’s what the sign said.”

In her line of vision across the top of her raised glass, the big, long-braided Indian caught her eyes, spun his stick in a single baton twirl and turned back to the table.

In tacit acknowledgment that George shouldn’t feel foolish eating alone, a bustle of tin opening, soup heating, table setting and sandwich spreading got underway in the warm fug of the manse kitchen. Bea said grilling was just asking for cholesterol, so the Reverend dressed cheese with lettuce instead. Anna stretched a tin of thick soup with thin milk. George opened a sealer of doubtful blue pickles and Anna found, in the back of the crisper, some woody late radishes the Letties had thrust upon her in the previous week. Delighted with all the energy of a party, Bob Ross was eager to make up his bowl of punch and get things really rolling, but was persuaded to hold off on the rum, at least till they’d drunk their soup.

Chatting carefully of weather and dreadful traffic on the roads, they ate until George could declare himself quite full, thank you, delicious, and he couldn’t be more grateful for their Christian hospitality, which startled the Reverend into a post-prandial grace.

“Here now, we’ll need something to clear ourselves before we can taste Robert’s punch!” Anna’s unusual presence of mind so took the others aback, that she’d returned from the pantry with an old biscuit tin rattling full of walnuts and crackers and picks before anyone could speak. In passing, she switched on the burner under her husband’s kettle.

“Oh! God! Walnuts!” George reddened with the enthusiasm of relief. For one horrible moment, hearing ‘something to clear ourselves’, he’d feared having fallen in with anorexic cultists, a basin and feather, then realized he just hadn’t before heard Anna voice a full thought.

“The walnuts, of course. Thank you, Anna, my dear.” Robert Ross was expected by his wife to accept the fine-point of dry living; elbow patches, castille soap (not lavender, it made her sneeze), grey beef and black tea, and so the nuts without the Stilton was less than no surprise, but he was pleased that it was cake night and she’d welcomed in the rum.

“Walnuts.” Bea sighed for the sake of her dentures and the taste of maple-walnut anything, more dear to her than chocolate. Nuts stuck in her plate? Unbearable. Maybe she could just suck and not swallow? “Walnuts!” Her face flooded red in shock with itself. The man’s just an acquaintance. Anna’s flirting worse than I am, all sparkly from the fumes. Anna? Get a grip on yourself, the girl’s never even been able to see her own eyelashes, let alone bat them.

They all cracked nuts with relief, while the kettle returned to a boil, then with a brush at dry husks from his chest, the Reverend rose to slice lemons, to pour and to squeeze, mingling amber into sharp, sweet vapour, then using a silver ladle with a modest mouth, he filled four beakers of butter-yellow Beleek and handed them round.

As the rum went down, spirits rose, for though rituals of hospitality, properly observed, should be their own reward, libations from a common bowl tip the heart, so that Bea’s suggestion of a hand of cards met with boistrous enthusiasm, and although George couldn’t remember ever having played canasta, he was confidently assured that he’d pick it up in no time.

“If you would hunt out the boot and the cards, my dear, in the buffet, as always, I expect. And perhaps Bea would clear the table while I do us another…” and the Reverend bustled his kettle to the tap and back to the stove.

George rose with the women and had the dishes stacked before Bea had picked up a soup spoon. She waited until she had gathered the cutlery and joined him by the sink before asking in a quiet voice if he’d rather be out of it and on his way back upriver, “You don’t have to stay just to be polite. Perhaps you’ve more important things to do. I’ve one of those big-beam flashlights you’re welcome to borrow, if you need to see your way.” Afraid that he was being trapped by good manners into what must surely be a stunning bore, and equally hopeful that she had it all wrong and that he was enjoying himself no end, Bea was quite unaware that the flattering quivers of fear and desire animating her questioning look called up a pounding in George.

George saw absolutely no reason to resist a harmless flirtation. Oh sure, you’re not just some senile old fart taking a last flying leap at the carousel ring. Are you? No! Am I? You’re grotesque, you’ll land on your face in the mid-way mud. I’m not that decrepit. Yah, right. I smell rancid old flesh stirring and champing it’s dentures for one more bite at the peach. Oh, piss off! “No, no, this is great, just the thing I need, Beatrice. All those big receptions, those boring affairs… uh…functions, boring functions, well, I’ve had more than a sane man’s share, so this’s a welcome relief.” Oh, you’re happy to be homey with the little people, are you? You pompous blow-bag.

“That’s not right. This’s awkward, isn’t it? I’m not pretending to some jaded urbanity here,” George sketched a soft-shoe and wagged his hands, “You’ve seen what a cabaret act that can be turned into – my wife’s performance art.” He hung his head, then raised it, “I do so much apologize for that, Beatrice. No, allow me, please. The responsibility is mine, and I want you and your daughter and your mother, to understand how grateful, how deeply grateful, I am for your amazing forbearance. An ugly, vulgar display, and yet you walked from it, all three of you, wrapped in dignity.”

“Wrapped in my daughter’s painting, you mean.” Oh, Lord, did I say that? Thought it and said it. I must be red as a beet. Where’d you get the nerve? Well, it’s true! And it wasn’t my fault. It was her! It’s always her, Elizabeth, that bi… His wife! “I’m sorry, that was uncalled for.” Bea was contrite, but she felt unaccountably happy, even felt like laughing at the image scratched on her memory; the three women of the Sutherland clan kilted in split canvas, like a newsprint photo of a hurricane hit, the very centre of disaster, and in the shuddering shock of accident, not picturing, but memorizing fear that she might no longer be wearing clean underwear. Bea had sniffed, Katherine sniffed, Tillie had snorted, and reassured, the three of them had stepped from the wreckage and made their way to where David stood, who had held their coats and Martin up, and out the door in an exit of imperial pace that had brought the doorman’s white glove to his silver-braided cap.

So Bea did smile, even chuckled as she spoke to George’s dog-eyed expectation, “We did make an exit, didn’t we? My mother would say it’s the breeding. Inbreeding, maybe.” Her smile saddened, “Looks like Katherine’ll be the end of that, now David’s left her. Last man of the family, gone.” She realized as she spoke that it was true, and a tear sparkled and her breath caught.

Slow, slow… you’re pounding too hard. Breathe from the belly, deep, George, deep, George, deep… deep… Don’t grab her by the hair. Can’t sweep her off her feet without us both in a heap on the mat. She’s man-less, don’t spook her. “I…” Whoa, Romeo, dignity here. You’re a man who wears a homburg, you can’t just go wild and start pissin’ fence lines. No. “Yes, of course, David, your daughter’s husband, we met…” George leaped to concern, “Not because of the other night, surely? He’s not blaming…”

Bea shook her head no, flinging a tear, until she could say, “No, no, he was already gone, really. He turned up for lunch that day, Friday, but she’d already told me,” Indignation slammed soup bowls into the sink, “My daughter wore a man’s suit, her husband’s suit, to lunch, in public, to Fran’s restaurant, in public, to tell me, in the Ladies, in Fran’s, in a public washroom, that her husband is leaving her, already left her, and she doesn’t know why. She’s done nothing wrong, he’s just gone for no reason at all. Worst of all, I believe her.” Bea applied herself to turning taps and running water to hide a stream of tears.

As a banker, George didn’t believe in breaking people’s knees. More sophisticated punishments left no mark, even the old beating with a sockful of oranges had evolved into a light touch on a keyboard. But it didn’t stop George from imagining a tire-iron swinging at a kneecap all the same. What kind of spoiled human garbage would make this wonderful woman cry? For no reason at all, apparently. Bullshit, the bastard’s got a little something on the side and he’s too lazy to drive with both hands. Are there still tire-irons?

Then again, what’s the likelihood of this Katherine being so innocent? I doubt she’s fucking that twit, Martin, don’t think he’s the type, but she’s a woman, for one thing, and an artist, a painter, for godsake! And she hasn’t done anything wrong? I saw her in that suit. You don’t suppose… “You don’t think maybe she’s a les… oh…” Oh, my god, Georgie, how’re you gonna get out of this? “They’re young! Phases, you know, different than our day, my day, your day, they seem to think differently now about…umm…gender.”

That her daughter’s marital problem might consist of someone having too much sex, or not enough, had, of course, crossed Bea’s mind, and had been dismissed, because she didn’t want to think about it. She certainly had no idea of considering what kind of sex, so she chose not to hear George, “Men just do seem to drift away when things get confusing.”

“I have the shoe! I have the cards!” Pink with anticipation for her once a year celebration, Anna called from the hall, “Shall we have some play?” For a quick moment, she felt so tickled with herself and liquor fumes, that she feared she’d wetted herself and then, overcome, as once a year she was by the desire to be naughty, she didn’t care if she had, and quite skipped to the table to lay a thick green plastic card tray and two dog-eared decks at the end by the punchbowl. The punchbowl which she saw as the Well before which the hands Gambled, for Anna kept an early Sunday School felt-board image of the world, and scenes like this, she knew, could be found without trouble in some of the ruder books of the Bible. She would suffer on the morrow, as she would the following three hundred and sixty-four, until once again she’d rum her cakes and play at cards and use foul language. Tonight she’d breathe.

Initially distracted by Anna’s peculiar method of accommodating the large hand of a canasta deal, George’s old poker habits picked up the rhythm in no time, and though he thought it rather like a game of adult Snap, he refrained from saying so. It was Anna’s laying of her hand of cards face-down in rows that held him back. Watching her study her share of the deal as each card fell, he noted that her fingers were neither unusually small, nor seemingly bent with pain, so that he understood that Anna’s unerring ability to pluck the correct card from the unseen hand lined up on the table before her was an adaptation of such long practice that it might well retrace to childish hands and the matching of lions and giraffes. Neither her husband, nor Bea, showed any suspicion that Anna might renege on a card, so they weren’t disguising beneficence and their lack of comment suggested it wasn’t a parlour trick. George chose to admire Anna’s memory silently and took it as a warning to avoid mentioning his wife.

Bea took a card and wondered what on earth the man was doing there. She considered the chances of filling a run of hearts. This man’s been having an affair, or something, with that bizarre woman, that friend of Maude’s – I ask you, what’s gone wrong there? Her own sister? The family’s gone mad. – That woman… A gypsy, so David figured. This man cheats on Elizabeth? You’d have to be suicidal. Maybe Anna’s right about him hitting my dock. Don’t be silly. Katherine called him a sexist old Philistine, but that’s the kind of thing she says, and she was upset. Mother thought he’s a good-looking man. She’s right for once. I’ve too many suits, hearts’ll never work. Martin would know what kind of affair it is. Oh, give it a try, the cards are there. And she discarded a frivolous diamond.

Bob Ross could read the signs: the plumpness of blood in Bea’s cheek, George’s left hand, between card picks, lying palm-up and cupped open on the edge of the table. Bea’s wide-eyed meditations certainly weren’t focused on her own hand. George wasn’t exactly caressing the cards, but his long-fingered efficiency promised pleasure. Anna and I could drop down dead under the table, grow horns and hooves, and these two wouldn’t notice till the deal passed. Sticky as a pair of teenagers, I shouldn’t wonder. One can only trust they’re past the increase and multiply stage.

Well, bless them, I mustn’t play dog-in-the-manger, who am I to say, after all, though I shouldn’t approve. Adultery. Who says I do? Can you not see friendship without lust? Whose lust? Leave it be. And the Reverend faced-down his cards to crack a walnut, “Should we have another cup of punch, George?”

Anna checked her hand with a long slow blink of her eyes that rolled the ordered columns of cards down the backside of her lids. Her strategic intention had a chance of winning out provided the enemy made at least two more of the moves she was anticipating. Too amateur not to, the pair of them. Bea’s never had the killer instinct, Lord knows she’s good, she loses nicely. Him, well, you’d think a money man’d be useful with the cards, but then he’ll have had his mind ruined by that evil bitch. He’s not up to much. We’ll beat their behinds and bury them, long as dear old ‘Patience and Perseverance’ keeps his eye on the cards and out of my rum. Still, I wouldn’t say no to another cup, myself, “Do say yes, Mister Preston. Of course he says yes, Robert, the moment we’ve played this hand out.

“Oh dear, not another disappointing card, Bea? Of course it’s just a game, any one of us could have the luck, it’s the Devil’s own child and goes where it will.” Though it wouldn’t hurt you to pay attention to what the hell you’re playing, Anna thought, discard, for the love of mike, we haven’t got all night, give us one of those diamonds you’ve no use for, “Perhaps the cakes can be persuaded to spare us a slice alongside, if you’d care for it. Would you? Oh, I’ve no doubt you would, dear. And Mister Preston? It’s early for them, not really ripe till Christmas, but it’s a dark cake, Bea’s always liked it, and not at all dry.”

Soaked, is what it is, soaked with a bottle of dry brown sherry, Bea counted, a cup each of maraschino and cheap port, and just now sprinkled to oozing with black rum. Soaked is what it is, not dry. Bea thought maybe she shouldn’t have been so hasty about diamonds, but discarded her draw as too late. Soaked. And so is she. My God, the woman’s pie-eyed! Anna? Maybe a little tiddled, it’s her cake night, after all. No, she’s plastered! She is. I’ve never seen it, not in her whole life. She didn’t even have a life when we were girls, might as well have been a nun, except her grandfather thought Dogans ate babies. Stupid old bastard. Forced the flute on her and turned her into a dirty joke. She should’ve been drunk from puberty. All of a sudden her hair’s down to her ankles. A lot of that lately, around the ankles, must be the moon. “Maybe I should make us some coffee, Anna, would that be a good thing?”

Declaring war, Anna wiped out the enemy, agreed to Bea’s offer, nodded permission to her husband who already had the kettle on, handed the decks to George, said, “Shuffle.” and trotted off to the pantry.

In the ensuing battle, cups of coffee, cups of rum, crumbs of cake and shards of walnut littered the field where knaves and kings contested for their queens. George used his knack for faces and knew what had been played. Bea sat up and focused on an economic preservation of chance benefits. The Reverend held a choice of everything and fed to his wife’s attack.

When finally they had exhausted themselves and all but an inch of the rum, they fell into a relaxed camaraderie that felt domestic. Bea flushed with the long-missed pleasure of men about the house, and watching her ears turn pink, George imagined tickling them with his nose. The Reverend admonished himself for the sin of envy, but he refused professional guilt; even if he was supposed to be the shepherd, they weren’t sheep. And really, weren’t they old enough to deserve whatever comfort they could claim? Whoever this man’s wife was, she’d apparently needed a spanking. It might be improper, but he did understand and he mustn’t be jealous, he could at least not covet his neighbour’s life.

Anna, frankly, was drunk, and the thought of that bitch, Bessie, cucko… cuckolded, cockholded, ha ha! by her old enemy… Bessie’s enemy, not her own… Oh, no, not her own dear Bea, do Bea, buzz Bea, no not Bea, her one true and only best of ever friends, Bea. Go, Bea!

“I’ll slip down Saturday for her,” Responding to the Reverend’s question of her mother being up for the church supper, “Friday we bake her lovely squares by phone,” Bea paid for her sarcasm with a shudder of remorse, “It’s a life,” not saying whether she meant Tillie’s or her own. “The Saturday drive’s not so bad, now the season’s over.” Another tremour belied her brave words, inspiring George to a helpful thought and to offering her a hand over the threshold of the manse.

“Wednesday at Helen’s, Anna, and don’t go early. Velma’ll get you in a corner and she doesn’t need to know how my dock got wrecked. We’ll just let her think it rotted away because of my neglect, she’ll believe that. And there’s no point…” Bea shuffled a bit on the porch planks and dug her fists into her sweater pockets, “uh… George’ll be seeing Velma and everybody else soon enough, you know, at the supper, so there’s really no need, you see, really no need to mention any…”

“Anna and I have had a lovely evening with you, Beatrice, a most enjoyable evening of conversation and light refreshment, with you,” Bob Ross answered Bea’s appeal. “Did we not, Anna?”

“Refreshment! Such a trumpet of a word! Like resurrection, without having to die first. Or die of thirst!” Anna tittered with delight in herself, “Of course we don’t. But we feel we might and that’s why…”

“Yes, dear, later we’ll discuss it. For now we’ll say goodnight, Beatrice, goodnight, George, a pleasure to have met you, and we’ll look forward to seeing you at the Supper,” The Reverend quickly framed a set of reassurances, “You’re quite sure you can make it back up river safely? You’re welcome to stay over with us, we can make you up a bed, no trouble. Though it’s best, I’m sure, you get back. Perhaps I should drive you up? Another day for the boat. I do think it’s best for all if…”

“No, Bob, thank you for the offer, but the moon’s up and it’s a straight enough run from here to there, and there’s no stray dock at the end of it. I’ve presumed on your hospitality quite enough for one evening. You have to let me come up with a proper gift in return, before I take to sleeping in your spare room. I’ll be back for the Supper, there must be something I can bring? Anything? I doubt you need food, you won’t be serving drinks. What do you lack?”

“Music!” The Reverend startled himself, the luxury of music was unheard of at a Fowl Supper, the blessing sung acapella by the diners standing to their chairs before sitting being the single entertainment. What on earth made me think of music? Pay attention, say goodnight to your guests. Oh, of course, yes, I see. Off these two go into the night, and if this isn’t a moment for the Moonlight Sonata to flood over the audience, I’ll eat my collar. The man did say a gift. “There’s never enough music, is there, George?” Though he’d come in the course of the evening’s gossip to some understanding of George’s position in the world, the Reverend had no desire to coerce, “It’s a pity life’s not more like the movies, with an orchestra playing behind every bush, but you know, we’re so far behind the times we haven’t managed even a portable player for the church hall yet,” he tried to be ashamed as he hummed Beethoven and waved from the porch, “Godspeed.”

Sam had kept up his brave disinterest over the pool table with an exhibition of long strokes and smashing jabs, spinning balls on the lip of the drop, tempting fate with perfect control. The woman couldn’t help but notice. Neither could Harv, who’d gotten irritated by that fuckin’ Canned Salmon comin’ on like some fuckin’ pool shark thinkin’ he’s so fuckin’ hot in his tight-ass jeans and fuckin’ ponytail. I’ll give that fucker a ride for his money. A game and rematch had left Harv hot and unfulfilled, down twenty bucks and twice as irritated. “I catch that fuckin’ cocksucker alone, I’m gonna do terrible things to him, terrible things!”

The grunting of hot testosterone had set adrenals on alert, and like everyone else in the Arlen, the woman had noticed, but she had stuck to the bar with the others and now she was tipping her head toward Brad, eyebrows clenched against curling cigar smoke, “And you actually told that macho asshole that I’ve got the hots for him?”

Hot shame and a sheepish grin, “Sounded like a good plan. Sorry. Paul wanted to… Never mind. My idea, my big mouth. Sorry.” and Brad felt like a small town jerk. So provincial.

“Aah, hey, give yourself a break. Might’ve been worse, might’ve been something to get me killed, instead of laid, so… you know,” The grin was too sweet to resist a quick kiss by his ear, “You’re forgiven.”

It was the kiss that broke Sam’s indifference. Time to make the move, little pig-fucker’s tryin’ to put the blocks to my woman! Ramming his winnings in the seat of his jeans, racking his cue with a snap, Sam signaled the bartender, went for a leak, came back at an amble, scratched his butt for Harv’s twenty and bought the fresh beer right next the woman’s elbow.

“He a faggot?” Sam was nonchalantly offensive, barely bothering to jut a thumb past her down the bar.

Her chin swung over her glass for a look and came back, “Who? Martin?”

“If you say so.” He stayed in profile and waited.

Katherine held her look with a hand to her chin. Great nose, you arrogant prick. “Why? What difference’d that make?”

Sam stared until she broke.

“I think so. But I’m not sure he does.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“If he doesn’t say so, he isn’t.”

“Yah, right. Does he come on to guys?”

“He doesn’t try to, I don’t think.”

Sam snorted disgust, almost said cockteaser, but edited for company and said, “Handjobs, I bet.”

Katherine stared over a held breath and then, “Well, you know, Sam,” Hanging his name out on a note of sarcasm she made a polite nod of introduction, “I’m Katherine, and I just heard that you and Paul’ve been buds for ever. Just how well do you know him ?”

Sam grinned, “Oh, he’s queer. Never even has to think about it, always was, just normal for him. Sometimes he gets like a girl, but not so it really bothers ya. It’s the mouth on him you have to watch for, he’s a sharp little fucker.” He arched his back and hardened his butt on the stool, “So, you’re not really… none of these guys’re…?” He let one long brown hand rub down the inseam of a thigh till he was sure she’d noticed, then tilted his chin at the glass in her hand, “I got more of that at my place. My truck’s in the shop. You got a vehicle?”

Dazed with alcohol and glazed with the romance of his survival amongst the natives, Martin willingly, if not eagerly, accepted Paul’s offer of a spare bed at his mother’s once the initial shock of murderous fury at Katherine’s apparent abandonment wore thin, “The woman drinks with her grandmother, for chrissake! We shouldn’t expect a lot. She’s a slut. No wonder David walked. She wants to fuck off with Chingasckook, fuck with Chingasckook? No skin off my ass. Hope he’s not after her hair, that’s all. She hasn’t got any.”

Bent into the backseat bench of Brad’s Camero, Martin felt the need to explain that Katherine dumped him for Sam because she was a down-market nymphomaniac with a thing for obvious stereotypes. Paul rolled his eyes at Brad and considered putting a hand in his lap, but figuring an audience likely to be a hindrance, settled for a lingering look and a deep breath in an open throat.

MONDAY

On the Monday following the unexpected coffee party in her kitchen, an occasion to which she ever after referred as the ‘Transcending’, Maude found herself in the back of a closet rooting for something decent to wear. I know I have skirts, I used to have skirts. She’d already tugged herself into an old frock of puce jersey, a dress she remembered wearing to Institute meetings, which felt comfortable enough, until she noticed in the closet mirror the side seams opening like slow zippers, not the stitching, but the fabric giving way. My god, how old are my clothes?

She tried to remember how long she’d had the two cotton house dresses she wore back to back. Oh, I bought them… A year ago? A year last May. So, not that… Sure, sure, so once a year I buy a new pair of… Seems you missed this year. Well, they’re still washing up okay. God, woman! The point is, how long’s it been since you bought anything besides two ugly muumuus? They aren’t muumuus. And why are you all of a sudden in a stew about clothes? Why are you in here, all in a sweat with your head caught in a hanger? I’m… Go sit down. Figure out what you think you’re up to.

Dragging a bulging garbage bag out of the rubble of moth-eaten wool and greening leather, Maude retreated to the edge of her bed for a sit and a cigarette. Damn! I’ll bet Lizzie doesn’t even allow these in the house anymore. She puffed furiously and blew a great cloud of smoke. That’s what this’s about, isn’t it? You’re off to Lizzie’s to lunch and you want to look nice. So what? What d’you mean, so what? When did you ever care about looking nice? You never go anywhere, and you don’t give a hoot about clothes except they’re warm enough.

She contemplated her cigarette, tried a hard narrow stream through her nose. Garbo wore pants, I’ve never worn pants, slacks, whatever, maybe that’d be the thing. You’ve lost your mind. You’ve been to one disastrous social shindy and a coffee klatch with your ding-bat sister and the Countess of Transylvania and suddenly you’re fussing like a debutante on the way to a tea dance. It’s not a tea dance, I don’t think they have those anymore and I was never a debutante. You’re telling me. So, what’s the fuss?

Katya had limited her morning round to an early quick trundle over beyond the Davisville station to check on her pear tree. Collecting the last of the windfalls from the scanty lawn into a plastic bag, she felt someone watching from a window of the house. She wasn’t putting up with any interference from people who’d leave good fruit to rot; she growled and stomped and looked fierce, pointed at the hose coiled on the side of the house and mimed watering the strangling petunias that edged the walk. For good measure, she kissed the pear tree goodbye and waved at the watcher.

Down in the market she bought two lovely fat trout, sisters, by the look of them, from the Portuguese; lemons, fresh spinach and a big bunch of dill – her own garden patch gone to seed – from the Greek; cheese from the Italians and bread from the Dutch. Once home, she smoked the fish in a box on the stove, washed the greens and set about batches of pastry for spinach puffs and cheese straws and tiny lemon tarts. I’ll need a cab to truck all this, it’d be fish soup in the subway. Whose bright idea was this? She laid the trout, skins gilt and glossy, on a plate to chill and started up a dill mayonnaise, with an eye on the oven to time the tarts.

You volunteered. Oh, I know, leaped right to it. They need feeding, Bena barely knows how to eat, let alone cook, and the look of Maude’s kitchen, she feeds out of the freezer. Elizabeth Preston doesn’t eat, she dines, I imagine. So, it’s up to me to make sure there’s something edible for lunch. You do your duty, or you end up with peanut butter sandwiches. Besides, Elizabeth offered her house and Bena’s unearthing Ziski, and Maude’s… The mayonnaise went into a sealer jar, the cheese straws into a tin, the puffs were tied in a salted towel and the tarts went on a plate with a lid. …Now I think of it, what is Maude’s department? More mischief? Possibly. Just who is in charge of this show?

Bena went north to the end of the subway, to the end of the bus, to the farthest edge of the city, and high in a glassed massif of concrete and steel, she found Witold Ziski asweat with black coffee, stinking of nicotine, red-eyed and vacant before a computer screen half-buried in sheet music pages.

Wit Ziski was an extremely thin, manic-depressive Pole who loved music, fishing and women. The received facts were alterable; baggy suits gave him at least a second dimension; pharmaceuticals and alcohol smoothed reality and he’d been chased out of Poland by the old communists. The passions, once acquired, were immutable; music was his life, fishing allowed him to think about music in long concentrations of solitude, the ferocity of sex allowed him to forget about music for brief moments of absorption. Everything served the music.

Sweeping her caped arms wide, haloed in a vision of herself backed against the cold northern light, Bena so frightened her old friend, that he was on his knees to the Angel of Death before he heard her voice, “Aach, look at you, mój drogi Pimpus, look at you!” Light caught the beak of her nose, lit the brass helmet of hair, flashed gold and green at her wrists, “No, no, no, my old darling.”

“Pim…puszka ?” Sore eyes straining to focus, sweat turning cold, Ziski’s wand of a body began to wag in anticipation of crescendoing joy, “It is you, my Bena?”

“It is, my Witold, it is. Come, get up from your knees, you will burn them on this poor carpet,” She toed the floor, “and you will not be graceful in your bows to the princess I have found for you.” A cymbal clash of wrists, “Come kiss your Bena, twoja Pimpuszka , for the memory of Paris and for music, and then you must dress.”

Ziski withdrew slowly from her grasp to her fingertips which he raised to his lips, all the while holding her glittering eyes with his own, “A princess? Here?”

“Oh, not a proper European one, a Canadian princess. She knows her name and will lend it for a charitable good. It is likely she would lend it for a nice pair of shoes, but that it not for me to say. She wishes to make an orchestra,” she swept up his fingers in hers, “Voila! She must first have a conductor.”

“She has musicians?”

“No.”

“She has a hall, a theatre to rent?”

“No.”

“She deals in pianos? She has a fine cello to sell?”

“No.”

“Ah hah! She has a young man, a brilliant young man with a great bassoon between his legs and she wishes to…”

“No. Her passion is to rule the schoolyard, not one boy. Though it would be well if it were so. It would be useful to me.”

Ziski heard a wistful, yearning note, “She has a husband?”

“Yes.”

“He is your friend?”

“He is my friend.”

“And he can afford an orchestra?”

“He can make it so, if she wishes it.”

“You have found a prince, I think, Pimpuszka .”

“And a princess for you, drogi Pimpus. Go, wash yourself, brush yourself, dress in fine cloth and perfumed leather, but hurry, I am to present you for lunch.” An imperious hand commanded him from the room.

“To lunch, my Bena,” He batonned one finger high in the air and leaped to the doorway, “An orchestra!”

“A nice suit, Witold.”

By Monday, with George away at the lake, Elizabeth had begun to feel quite bachelorish, leaving a nightgown dropped on the bedroom floor, phoning Holt’s to order up tinned things and hard biscuits and a few bottled sauces. She ordered her housekeeper to leave the cover off the diningroom table, to lay blotter, pad and pencils for five, “We’ll need water glasses, the second best, and a carafe. It’s a meeting, d’ you see, organizational, not social, use the thermos jug, more businesslike. There’s a tone to these things and it takes a firm hand, or you end up with a lot of gossip and people just enjoying themselves without any sort of reason.

“We won’t sit to eat. When Holt’s delivers, set it out on your table, they’ll want to stand after a meeting and they won’t settle in. Five white wines, not the Waterford, and there’s a bottle of something in the refrigerator.” Elizabeth became confidential, “Now, there is a possibility this other woman… Swedish, is she? No matter, whatever, one of those dumpy housefrau types from Europe, you know, dresses like a baglady,” The secretly Polish Missus Quaid nodded her understanding and continued running her duster the length of the back hall wainscoting.

“Katya, yes, I think that’s it, one of those Scandinavians, anyway, she insisted that she must bring lunch. Perhaps she’s used to soup kitchens? I said no, of course, but she insisted that it would be her contribution. Well, who knows what that will be? Although, those people do a nice thing with sandwiches, don’t they? Moevenpick, is that them? Smorgasbord? Herring, I expect.” Elizabeth made a lemon mouth and shook her head, “Well, do what you can to make it attractive, you might sort of lose it among the good things.”

When she went up to dress, she found that Missus Quaid had stuffed her nightgown into the laundry hamper. She tried dropping it on the floor again, but decided it just looked rumpled instead of free. Settling on a heavy-belted khaki whipcord skirt and an oyster broadcloth shirt with a scout tie of Liberty madras, she stalled over shoes. Canvas? Leather? Straw? Pump? Not a sling. Heel? Flat? Sandal? A brown cordovan, medium heel, laced at the instep – a little brigadier of a shoe, that’s the thing. Not bossy, authoritative, a Julie Andrews as a Wren, or whatever, sort of shoe.

Oh, good god! You don’t suppose that whatzer… Katya, she won’t show up in those barn boots? No, she was normal at Maude’s on Saturday. Uumhum. Well, not grotesque. And of course Maude’ll be dowdy as ever. I don’t know what to do with her, such an embarrassment, a sister who doesn’t care how she looks, it reflects. Maybe I ought to lay down a few rules, a dress code wouldn’t be out of order, I don’t think, if I’m expected to direct this little group. Nothing rigid. She strapped on a large gold watch, railroad face, cowhide band, snugged the slipknot of silk to her throat, pined briefly for a nice quirt, a swagger stick – Holt’s? She thought she knew there were shops for that sort of thing, but weren’t they maybe for… well, for… Yes. Well. Holt’s could find her something later, perhaps.

And she stood for inspection before her mirror, a ponderously beautiful old cheval glass George’s mother had brought to her marriage. Its silver had softened and sufficiently tarnished with time to impart a cloud-like suspension to reflection. When the sun was in the right quarter of the bedroom bay, Elizabeth could look positively Titian. She adjusted straps. Not a uniform, Maude would just disgrace it, and I’d need ribbons, of course, for rank, and I’m apparently not sleazy enough for an Order, like that plastic blonde bit… Yes. Don’t get warm, now. No, but a style, a sort of no nonsense good taste.

And then she remembered Bena and the starch went out of her shirt. The Countess’ll be clanging like a porchful of wind chimes, and you can’t expect new tricks from an old bitch with that kind of breeding. Wincing from her own mind, she murmured, “Courage,” and took from her closet safe a ring with a rather large, square, exceptionally fine emerald which fitted to her quiet marriage bands. When at court, do as the courtesans do. No! The courtiers, yes, as the courtiers do. You really must watch that sort of thing, you’ll have enough trouble with all these ethnics trying to pretend they understand English. Thank heaven Missus Quaid’s a Scotchwoman, at least she knows what I’m saying.

Washing up Elizabeth’s breakfast dishes, Missus Quaid wondered for the umpteenth time how one woman could make such a pig sty out of a cup of coffee and two slices of toast. Swiping at a trickle of honey on the side of the toaster, she went back to scraping scalded milk from the rim of a saucepan. And what is this Swedish husfrau business? She better not be taking up with those mad Swedenborgians, or some sort of table thumpers. She said an organization meeting. What now? Have to wait and see what she comes down in. Not a painter’s smock, from the sound of things, she made a damned fool of herself at Mister George’s party. Not the first time, not likely the last; she’ll be back like a Cossack, even if she is a sheet short of a washing. Who can tell, maybe the Swede is good with a meatball and never is there too much herring.

Missus Quaid set the kitchen to rights, shoved a second bottle, an upscale Riesling, into the fridge, opened up the dining room, removed a great Rockingham bowl to the sideboard and took her oil rag to the table. Four guests and the Fishwife, some little benefit for the rich, no doubt. The usual windbags playing at Board of Directors, first thing they find is a table to sit around.

She dug out leatherbound blotters, a new pack of letter blocks, a fistful of yellow pencils and a sharpener. Laying pads and paper, she carried the pencils to the kitchen and carefully sharpening into a bowl, shaped ten perfect points, a chore she liked for the smell. She added the shavings to the muslin bag that kept moths from the winter-coat closet and laid two pencils a place.

Mind you, with the Fishwife at the head of the table__ she set a tray of coasters and tumblers by Elizabeth’s blotter and took the thermos jug to chill in the fridge__ there won’t be any time wasted on choosing a queen, they can get right down to organizing the hell out of some bunch of poor bastards who need to make a living.

The delivery of silly things in tins and packets, potted livers and pastes, flavourless crackers and dark ugly sauces in overwrought bottles, marooned in the centre of the broad kitchen worktable, looked suspiciously like a late-night dormitory sin. Missus Quaid laid plates and silver, stemware and napkins, and refused to make the food more attractive.

When Elizabeth descended to run an eye over the arrangements, she found two cushions on a sofa out of colour order, and fearing again that her housekeeper was failing, she scouted the rooms for fallen petals, drawers ajar, dust motes in the sun.

Having kept her Polish accent secret, Missus Quaid avoided questions in the certainty that Elizabeth could be counted on to voice her expectations, she was forward with her orders and that was a comfortable thing, for Quartermaster Cameron Quaid was a bit that way himself. Still, Missus Q. had cultivated a word or two and relied on punctuation and expression to get a simple answer out of Elizabeth.

Listening to the footsteps of the inspection tour from the safety of the plate-pantry, Missus Quaid determined to question the arrival of the guests, whoever they might be. ‘Time’, delivered with a large question mark over her bifocals and a pursing of the lips, should throw off nit-picks over the lay of the nap of the drawing room carpet. She pushed on the swing door and almost saluted Elizabeth standing foursquare and vigilant in brown leather and khaki, “Time?”

Early in the morning, before George Preston’s insistence on responsibility could blacken her name, Bea phoned Ted McGee to have his men come pull her dock. Oh, collapsed from old age and rot, she supposed, with her fingers crossed. Best to get it out before winter, they could talk about a new one come spring, maybe a float would be best, yes, Ted, thank you.

She dressed herself for town, on the grounds that if she wasn’t at home in the event that George turned up in Strawbridge, she couldn’t be held accountable, then drove her old Ford out the back of the village to Bert’s garage to have the window glass seen to. Bert offered to drive her back and when she said no thanks, would he call her a cab instead to run into Orillia to have her hair done, he wondered what she was up to since he was pretty damned sure she was a regular at the Village Cut & Curl just like everybody else. But he knew better than to question a woman’s beauty secrets, so he just refused to let her waste any more good money and insisted she drive his car instead.

George had happily slept late and didn’t drag his bedding out to air till close on noon. Breakfasting on coffee and stale biscuits, he made up a grocery list that grew with every dry bite. He knew what he was planning from the length of his list, but avoided even thinking of the next step until he’d tidied the kitchen and had a wash and a shave. Then settling back to the kitchen table with fresh coffee and the old black phone, he allowed himself to call up the thought of his secretary at the other end of the line. He imagined Darla in the softly lit silence of her office, an anteroom to his own, both of them mercifully unrefurbished rooms that looked in upon themselves, where the corporate scrim wasn’t sky-filled lake or cityscape, but rather a Klimpt and a Klee and a circus Milne hung on old walnut, old red turkey rugs, old leather, old scotch in old crystal on an old sideboard… George could think of it all with affection, but noticing the frequency of old, he chose that for an omen and dialed up the city.

“Miz Samson’s office. Goodmorning.”

It wasn’t Darla who answered, but a smooth male voice pitched low in pretended authority, and such an unaccountable occurance so threw George from the train of his imagining that his first thought, which he spoke, was, “Where is she? Where’s Darla?”

“I’m sorry, Miz Samson is away from her desk this morning.”

Damn! Poor girl’s probably saddled with some stupid chore I was booked for.

“Perhaps there is something that I could help you with. Are you calling on business? Sir.” The oil of condescension leaking from the voice implied that it was unlikely to be important.

One of those saucy little bastards Personnel buys by the dozen to plug holes with! At first appalled by the invasion of this sort of late-to-the-party Machiavelli into the daily conduct of his business, George had come to console himself with the thought that their cynical disappointment for having missed the golden age of everything from Woodstock to safe insider-trading very likely blinded them to the knowledge that reformation followed renaissance and also, quite frankly, that nobody’d liked that bitter little prick, Machiavelli, either. Considering his options, including his new favourite, a tire-iron to the kneecaps, George took his first step in the new program, said, “Fuck off,” and hung up.

Judging it was going to stay a sunny day, he left his blankets on the line when he took the cruiser out and down the river, his list of groceries buttoned up in his shirt. It didn’t even seem strange now that Darla wasn’t at her desk when she should be. He wasn’t worried about her, it just seemed obvious, another omen.

Maude phoned for a cab a half hour early, willing to risk a punctuality lecture from her sister – “You mustn’t come before you’re asked, Maude, it isn’t done. It’s an inconvenience to the help and it makes you look needy.” But she wanted to arrive before time for the sake of her friends, who shouldn’t be left to Elizabeth’s mercy on their own. She’s liable to hand Katya an apron and put her to polishing the crystal, and god knows what she’ll get up to with Bena, now she thinks she’s got herself a countess. Still not sure I trust this bosom buddies flip-flop, one minute they’re The Wife and The Other Woman, next minute it’s sharsies and come play in my yard. Even if she is my sister, the woman’s nuts.

In the cab, Maude considered her recent abrasions on the uneven mosaic of urban transport (she’d been tossed into traffic from a standing cab by an irate ethnic apparently licensed to drive and to misunderstand) and was grateful for a fat pink-balding gum chewer who grunted once on instruction and had her at Elizabeth’s curb before she’d finished settling in the backseat. She’d given the lamb a pass this time, wrapping herself in a voluminous old caped-back coat of rusty tweed, which inspired Elizabeth to remark that she looked like Red Ridinghood on her last legs, and that if Maude thought she could start dressing like the Countess, she had another think coming, “One bangle and you’re out of this club. Bena’s almost royalty, she can wear what she pleases – just look at the Queen – but you’re just a Davisville widow, remember that. And couldn’t you find anything else to put on? You look a sight in that outfit, seat’s so shiny I can see my face.”

“Keep your face off my backside, Lizzie. I knew I should get here before the rest of your victims. If you think you’re going to tramp your size nines…”

“Sevens!”

“In a pig’s eye, Sister. …your fat, pudgy nines all over my friends…”

“They’re my friends too, as much as yours. The Countess certainly is, anyway, she said so, and the Maestro will be, of course. After all, I understand these creative people, and so really, you’ve just known whatzer… Katya, longer than I have, and I don’t mind if she’s your friend, so…”

Maude reached and held a tip of Elizabeth’s madras tie with a thumb and finger, “I’m warning you, Lizzie, I mean it,” and with her other thumb and finger slid the knot tight to her sister’s throat, “If you aren’t nice to everybody, and I mean everybody, I will personally drive up to Strawbridge and tell Bea McAlpine and Velma Lettie, Vera too, that your husband found it necessary to spank your bare bum. Understand? If it didn’t appear in the church calendar next Sunday, I’d be awfully surprised.”

“Missus Quaid!” Her voice squeaking with panic, Elizabeth tugged free and clattered back the hall, “Coffee, Maudie, you’ll want coffee. Missus Quaid! Oh dear, your coat,” she clattered back to the door, “Let me take it, dear. It looks… warm. I’ll just hang it, shall I? Missus..! Oh, there you are. Missus Matthews would like… You know my sister, yes,” Elizabeth was suspicious of what looked to be quite genuine smiles accompanying murmurs of acknowledgement. They’ll be at it behind my back, if they aren’t already, “She’d like coffee, I’m sure. Wouldn’t you, Maude? And we’ll have it in the… in the… uh…” The housekeeper waited, since the coffee service sat prepared on the pantry counter. Maude waited to see if she was to be hustled back to the sunroom behind the kitchen. “…in the front room then, the drawing room.” Separate the gossips, and a treat for dear Maudie. “The good cream, Missus Quaid.”

Elizabeth turned a wide, tight smile to her sister, “Did you wipe your shoes, dear? Autumn leaves on the silk pile, you know, makes dreadful work for poor Missus Q., a dear woman, but she does ramble in her mind, you know. I’m sure of it. Hard to tell what’s true. She’s slipping in little ways, cushions out of order, laundry in and out of hampers, bedsheets just not as white as they…” Her temples ticked with an alarming memory of sheets and George and… “Sit! Sit, dear, this’s comfortable. Should we have a fire? Are you cold? I feel a bit… Here’s the coffee.” And she threw Maude a knowing look when the housekeeper set down the tray with rather more of a rattle than was necessary. Elizabeth shook her head and mouthed ‘sad’ at Missus Quaid’s retreating back. Maude rolled her eyes and poured coffee.

“Elizabeth, just what is it you think you’re going to accomplish with this new stunt you’re working up?” Maude waited while her sister pretended not to hear, fussed with a cushion, diddled a spoon in her coffee, took a sip and finally flicked a glance back. “Lizzie, d’you seriously think you’re going to take over an orchestra? If you want to front a band, dear, I expect there’re some boys in a garage out in Scarboro who’d love to know you, but I can’t imagine the Toronto Symphony’s going to come play in your yard. George doesn’t have that kind of money.”

Nose flaring, Elizabeth ticked and fidgeted beneath a surface of smoothly locked knees and elbows and rigid fingers controlling a thin china cup full of scalding black coffee, “I intend, Maude, to found an entirely new orchestra, a properly European orchestra, I should think. After all, it’s where the music comes from.”

That anyone should think for one minute that she cared if the TSO came to play at her house! Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, she’s always wrong. I know perfectly well I can’t do the TSO, not overnight, there isn’t time to kiss that much ass. As if it was ever a matter of George spending his money. “I’m going to start my own. Ours. For you too, Maude. We’ll found our own, with the Countess and Maestro Ziski, and uh… Katya. Yes, for her as well. It’ll be an ethnic orchestra, I guess. Yes, of course, but the right kind of ethnics. The ones who know the music because their people wrote it. D’ you see?” Elizabeth replaced her cup in its saucer with perfect aim, struck by such obvious brilliance.

Maude blinked because she didn’t know what else to do. Her sister was far loonier than she’d given her credit for. Patting the bagged pockets of her old blue suit coat for a pack and lighter, she had a cigarette lit before she remembered that she was only allowed to smoke in the sunroom with the fans on high. Her sister sensed the guilty, guarded look for an ashtray, “Filthy habit! You’re only allowed to have that in the…” But there was a reason why… Yes, she didn’t want Maude near Quaid, so… “Here, use this,” And she yanked open the mesh screen on the firebasket full of neatly laid birch, “Just don’t set it on fire, Okay?”

“You’re sure you’ve got this ethnic thing right, are you? You wouldn’t just be picking up on a fad here?”

“Oh, no! Everyone’s doing it, of course; Indians, both kinds, ours and theirs, and the French, they’ve always been ethnic, and the Blacks, it goes without saying, now that they’re African-Canadians, with quite nice restaurants and their own food. So, yes, it’s fashionable, but I think my ethnics might be a little more in the tradition of what this country stands for. Don’t you?” Elizabeth set her lips with a little nod, aware, with a certain amount of shame, that her own sister was lacking in the new political correctness.

Desperately curious, Maude still had no intention of asking her sister what it was she thought the country stood for. Her synapses are doing headstands over this one, she’s so full of codswallop she’ll splatter all over the furniture if I ask her what she’s talking about. “So, you’re going to make your own symphony orchestra with one used conductor, one slightly suspect Hungarian aristocrat, a woman whose name you can’t even remember, and just how much of George’s money? He doesn’t even know about this, does he? He’s been up at the lake ever since you dreamed this up, hasn’t he? You don’t think just because he spanked you, he’s going to feel bad enough to buy you an entire orchestra? Even you aren’t that bald-headed, are you? Good God, girl!”

Elizabeth’s nostrils were knuckle white. That her own sister should consider a brilliant idea in such shoddy terms, it showed where her mind was, “You don’t buy something like this, Maude, you don’t buy a cultural institution, for crying out loud! You may patronize it and…”

“Oh, well then, you’re a natural, dear, nobody’s more patronizing than you are.” Maude sucked down to a good coal on her butt and flipped it among the birch. She hadn’t the patience for her sister’s half-baked aesthetics, the appreciation tending to Lizzie, rather than to art, and looked at her watch, “They should be here. What d’you suppose Katya’ll have done for our lunch, something smart with fish, d’you think?”

Elizabeth shuddered and lost the sting of her sister’s mean-spirited distain for the appreciative capacity of a finer sensibility to a vision of fish eyes staring through a cream sauce, “Pah, you know I don’t care for food that swims, Maude. Anchovy paste in a dressing, perhaps, that’s flavour, but even ducks, well no, really, they do, and a goose, well it walks more, but…” And suddenly she felt quite nauseous and bitter black coffee rose in her gorge, she growled, “Excuse me,” from back of clamped lips, darted into the hall, managed a stiff-legged gallop up the stairs and along to her bathroom where she collapsed in a burning heap with a wet washcloth. So, Maude took it upon herself to answer a knock at the door.

Feeling like a fallen woman with at least one newborn under the teacloth, Katya stood clutching a straw picnic basket, her string bag and a large canvas carry-all, resenting the cabbie’s offer to take her round back. How did I get myself into this? She hefted the hamper of smoked fish and mayonnaise. Ridinghood with one spoiled granny. I’d rather the wolf right now, than Elizabeth Preston. With the best of intentions, she won’t be able to help herself. I’ll be at the wrong door.

“Katya! Wow, look at you,” Maude turned on the doorstep and hollered back the hall, “Soup’s up! Meals on Wheels are here, Lizzie!” And turning back, “Don’t you just look the Lady Bountiful knocking up the cottage door?”

“I feel more like Kathy the Caterer, to tell the truth. I’m glad you’re here, I’m not ready for your sister.”

“Enh! Don’t worry about her, she’s upstairs in a faint, or a hotflash, just because I mentioned you might have done something nice with fish for…” She noticed Katya’s eyes widen and her own winked with delight, “You did?”

“Smoked trout.”

“Oh, perfect. Whole, I hope? Heads and all?”

“Uumhuh.” Any suspicions Katya might have were sent spinning by Maude’s obvious glee.

“Just the merry dish to set before a countess and a concert conductor.”

“With cheese straws for us, and lemon tarts for the princess.”

“Dainty?”

“Very dainty.”

“Oh good. Come on in. Give me that basket.”

A small car passing in the curve of the street braked with a squeal and reversed to a neat stop at the foot of the walk. A lean-headed man unfolded himself from the driver’s seat, a gust of autumn unfurling his black suit. “Witold Ziski,” said Katya to Maude, the two of them stalled in the doorway, “I should’ve done more fish, he needs feeding.”

“Is he bad?” Maude watched for a stagger as the suit blew around the car in the breeze.

“He can be, but it’s really just because it takes two hands to eat sensibly. He’s a musician, one hand’s always carrying the tune and it’s easier for the other one to hold a glass. And here’s Bena,” as Ziski swung open the passenger door and presented an arm.

Against the crackling dry leaves of bared maples, Bena’s green loden capes looked felted of moss and the gold, only gold, in her hair, at her throat, on her breast, at her wrists and knuckles and ears burned deep as peat fire in the smokey cold air. Katya wondered as always how Bena with her curiously disjointed legs could emerge from the most inconvenient position as though a footman had handed her back to earth, “She’d come out from under a rock looking like that, I bet.” Katya snorted scorn, but affection curled her mouth when she shook her head.

“She does it well, I’ll give her that,” Maude brushed at a lapel and did up a button and thought she should have dug a bit deeper in her closet, “Wait till you see my sister, she’s in battledress too.”

Between Katya and Missus Quaid, it was fun at first sight. Missus Q. had steeled herself for a bleached Viking bearing the makings and prepared to give orders for over-designed sandwiches that would need a fork (she’d refused to even fear a fondue pot), so that in her relief she took right to the frizzled stump in the too loud dress who stood in her kitchen offering three bags full.

Katya knew, for Maude had told her, that Elizabeth Preston believed her housekeeper to be of the old Scotch gentry, a little come down, of course, widowed, low in the heel, good managerial stock, landless and therefore biddable. Who she was, was a war bride from Warsaw, married to a quartermaster sergent who’d come out to Canada, kilt intact, to regimental offices. She needn’t have worked, but hadn’t been trained not to, so once the generation of young Quaids had aim on pensions and benefits, she’d put herself on display in a few choosey neighbourhoods of the city. She said so little because she’d never gotten control over the consonants of her own language; she thought speaking was an overrated, French weakness. She set her lips over polite murmurs and either was dismissed for stupidity, or had her ear talked off.

When Missus Quaid had answered Elizabeth Preston’s summons in response to discreet inquiries on both sides, she came in at the front door. Elizabeth quite mistook her to be what she wanted, offering a paltry wage and regular use of the front door. Missus Quaid had seen the need in the error, doubled the offer to a salary and took the back door for her own. Now she nodded approval over Katya’s display of gilded trout and lovely pastry things.

“It is good?” Katya chose a liturgical construction as a convenient leap over the thorns of three languages.

“It is good.” Missus Quaid allowed the jump, “I can make of it very nice.” She shaped with her hands, “Plate for fish, silver bowl, cakestand for little lemon pies.”

Katya was pleased, but not so sure she wanted to be showcased by Elizabeth Preston’s housekeeper, “Oh, no need to fuss. Simple, plain is best.”

The housekeeper cast a hand at Elizabeth’s vacuum-packed idea of lunch heaped on the table, “There is need.” Smiling recognition and gratitude together, she ushered Katya back into the hall, relieved her of her old gabardine topcoat, fur collar and cuffs; without a wink took her stringbag and steering with a gentle curve of neck, she shot Katya back into the gathering.

Naturally, even from the entombment of her bathroom, Elizabeth had sensed the imminent arrival of her future at the curb, and so she was full-front and looking to attention on the landing at the foot of the stairs by the time her guests entered her hall.

“Missus George Preston, Elizabeth, I present to you the Maestro Witold Ziski.” Thus Diaghilev offered Njinsky to the world, and Bena’s bell tones rang a full curtsy.

Maude had done the graceful thing, shooing Katya back kitchen-wards to the care of Missus Quaid, meeting Bena and Ziski at the head of the walk, handing them into the hall, on to her sister. Now she lingered to close the door, with a smile for the russet light on the lawn. She closed and turned to Ziski’s presentation, and she felt suddenly a very long way from home, uncertain of the neighbourhood, shy of strangers. She had never cared to be anywhere other than home, had been content all her life to live within herself, for herself. She had chosen early, before Harry, from bleak girlhood, to be utterly privileged, to have no aspiration, to accept that whatever, wherever, she managed to be in life, she would have aspired to it. That had been the best she could do in the way of ambition.

So, why am I managing the door for one of my sister’s song and dance acts? Oh, face it, Maudlin, times change, bodies change, blood rises, standards fall, you’ve been bored out of your mind so long the first person to say hello in a month of Sundays has you out in the streets fighting and drinking, and she was wearing rubberboots. And I’m not losing it? No! Don’t be silly. What could be nicer than lunch with some interesting new people in your sister’s lovely home? Oh, God! Of course, you could be home putting mitts on the tea kettle. A goose on her grave so shivered her back that without further thought her hand was out and into the scrum, “So, Witold, nice suit.”

“You like it? Is not too big?” Hands in his pockets, Ziski flared the jacket and mocked a model, his black eyes advertising a good deal more than a suit.

“You must forgive my sister, Maestro,” Elizabeth was appalled by Maude’s boldness and given to punishment, “Obviously, as you see, she is unaquainted with decent fashion.” Unsure of the need to raise a slight blush for her acerbity, she noticed Ziski’s disconcerted glance down the length of his suit, and raised a full flush, “Oh! I didn’t mean your… It’s a beautiful suit, lovely cloth. Italian? So dramatic. You wear it so well.”

“In Milano it was made for me.” And paid for me by a fat frau who likes to sing Puccinni, he thought, turning a ravishing smile upon his hostess, “And you, Elizabeth, your clothes you must buy in Paris and in Rome, yes? You are so beautifully dressed, for command, I think. You must call me Wit.”

His veeing of teeth to a moist full bottom lip in a thin handsome face brought Elizabeth to full steam, and creating some air with a waving of arms, “Vill you come…” she led.

Even Bena was astonished by the speed of Ziski’s cast, the set of the hook, and she blinked admiration at him before sharing a quick smile and a nod with Maude and Katya as they followed.

“You must have five musicians,” Ziski rapped his pencil five times on the blotter, waved a cleft and beat five again, “A conductor and five musicians. And you must pay them.” At forty-eight, Witold Ziski was so tired of being poor, struggling and artistic, that he looked sixty. “One violin, two violins, one viola, one cello and one bass, that is the heart.” Bena had promised there was money here and that her friend Katya would have done something wonderful for lunch, he wanted both. “One violin must be strong, know all the music, how to play it, how to teach it. That one will be concert master, and you must pay for a good one.”

Ziski knew perfectly well that people with money didn’t like to be asked for it, or if they did, liked to say no for the pleasure of being asked and keeping it to be asked again. He’d be grateful for lunch, he’d heard trout mentioned, but he’d rather have a future, he needed his teeth fixed. “The rest of an orchestra you will get because they want to play, some to learn, some will want to be stars, but you cannot have the orchestra without the heart,” His pencil struck the air, “and it is the baton that beats the heart!”

A chinking of gold threatened the moment, but an obedient neck muscle lashed the maestro’s back hair and warned Bena to silence. Katya just knew that Bena had expected to correct Ziski’s English, and her appreciation of his performance was greatly increased by his means of control. Maude was certain that her sister wasn’t pleased to be handed the bill right off the baton, as it were, and expected her to shy.

“But did you not just say that the…uh, concert master? Yes? The concert master must teach?” Elizabeth thought she’d spotted an economy and mounted up, “If he… Must it be a he, did you say a he? Could it not be a she?” She looked knowingly at the three other women, “I expect that’s possible. But you said that person must know the music and teach it, did you? Yes. Of course, conductors are lovely to watch, all proper white ties and hair, but I mean, if you’ve already a band leader..?” Her innate cheapness attempted to outride all possible attractions.

“My dear lady!” Black cloth draping into spiritual folds, Maestro Witold Ziski stood from his place at the table and reaching, collected his hostess’s two hands into his and with a slow raising of arms drew her to her feet, “My dear lady, it is the concert master who teaches, maybe, to be musicians. It is the conductor who teaches to be an orchestra.” He said it with his lips, with his eyes, through his fingertips, and his body swayed gently to a slow movement.

With a toss of his chin, he drew Bena in, “When my pimpuszka, Bena Alesandrovna, came to me in excitement to tell a miracle, to tell me a woman, a woman of true culture – she said, in fact, a princess – a woman of good taste with a great love of music..! Aacch, she told me this and I did not believe her, I thought, ‘Ah, my Bena, you have been too, too long and too far from your home, there cannot be such virtue here, here in this raw, wild… new country.’ I am here ten years and I have not seen such virtue. It does not exist! But I am wrong.” He spread wide his arms with hers at his tips, “I cannot be blind. What I see, Elizabeth Preston, is someone who knows how to lead!”

Ziski’s black eyes sparked with such glee and his wicked grin was a dare, “You can do this thing, Elizabeth Preston, a woman of the best cultivation is what I see. I look in your house…” His look swept an arc towards crescendo, “…beautiful things. I trust you. It will be so wonderful fun, we will have very best times.” And he slipped his fingers from hers to rise higher, “We will make music.” His hands made a sign in the air and his suit was a surplice, and then he bowed as a maestro bows, while Elizabeth’s arms drifted to her sides, and he murmured quite clearly to himself, “Very likely a princess.” And as Elizabeth still stood, he sat.

A princess. He doesn’t mean it. We will make music. They all talk that way. Elizabeth’s thighs felt heavy. It’s why they’re Europeans, everything means something else. He certainly is an exciting man. Her thighs were pressing. I’d better sit. Just six to pay! You can’t deny it’s a step down from the Gallery staff. We’ll call it downsizing, it’s the decent thing to do. Take deep breaths and bend your knees. He’s certainly worth something more than the violins and whatnot. Slowly! He’s not shy about the getting paid part. They can’t want much, you wouldn’t think, after all, they get to play that lovely music.

“Are you going to sit, or do we all get up?” Maude was dry, “I don’t know about you, Sister, well actually I do, but I’ll bet Witold could use a cigarette after that. I know I could. And a glass of something wouldn’t go wrong. Katya, Bena, something cool? My seconders, Lizzie, short adjournment for refreshments. All rise!” Maude flashed her cigarette pack at Ziski and got a nod, “Powder room’s to the left of you, smoking room to the rear. I’ll tell Missus Q. to pull the cork out, shall I?” She marched Ziski through the plate pantry hollering, “Seventy-six trombones and a big bassoon!”

Interrupting my meeting! Telling people what to do in my own house! Ordering my housekeeper around like… Elizabeth’s nose was white with the strain.

Katya thought the crack about the cigarette to be a bit coarse, but not inappropriate, considering the heavy breathing, and she was sure the woman was quietly rubbing her thighs together under that khaki skirt.

Bena approved, but thought the moment could use a little buffing to bring up the shine, “Your sister is charming in the way of the people, is she not, Elizabeth? Proud I would be to have such a big honest nature, but you must not let her enthusiasm shock your own, perhaps gentler, perhaps finer feeling for what is good taste. We cannot help it, you and I, if we are bred to the blood of princes, knowing what is right, it is our fate, and you, you most certainly, consort to a man of great influence and responsibility, you must carry your cultivation to people with loud behaviour. It is your duty.”

Bena had risen with her words to circle the table with arms extended, and unnoticed in the righteous fluster of compliments, denials and hands, Katya sidled from the room, crossed the hall to a lavish little Laura Ashley lavatory, closed the door on Bena’s voice, “…magificent emerald!”, made herself comfortable and shut her eyes against ten thousand tiny flowers and a heaving panic.

Young when her husband was killed, her son just three, Katya had chosen the middle of the road for the following years. A quiet, respectable widow with orphan son, she’d returned to Finland to earn some credit for the language and came back in time to put Sam to school and herself to supervise, in two languages, the offices of Fincan, dealers in furs. Self-contained, she had lived in a genteel, respectful manner that allowed her to hide in her yard in the summer and not be missed in winter. She worked and gardened and cooked for Sam, and afforded him whatever they mutually agreed that he needed to make his way through boyhood.

Katya’s choice, however, hadn’t prevented Sam from turning back into Saami. After two decades of reasonable peace, Sam had put aside the ordinary life he’d been given, and choosing roots and metaphysics instead, fled to a fish house back in Old Suuomi where he built boats and carried on with God. Katya was disgusted; all those bland, normal, mediocre years – four ungenerous raises and one pathetic affair so lukewarm Sam never even noticed she had it – all those years of safety in the middle lane she had chosen for Sam’s sake. She, herself, would have gone to California and dropped acid on a beach. No, she’d have stayed back and married some big thick Finn farmboy and… No, maybe she’d have been a Queen of Fashion, modeling, making, ruling… Or maybe she’d have worked and gardened and cooked to please herself.

Well, she’d felt too old for the acid, too fat for the beach, both for the farmboy and the fashion plate, so she took early retirement, encouraged her yard to run wild, ate what she liked and stopped being ordinary, which mostly manifested in her unorthodox wardrobe and habit of harvesting the windfalls from any untended fruit trees she could find in the city. She was no match for Saami, aglitter with fish scales, birching self-indulgence in the sauna, but there were times when she caught herself dressed like a sofa, monstrous boots on her feet, hands full of bags full of bruised apples, bleeding walnuts, melting purple mulberries, and was pleased to think she was giving ‘ordinary’ a run for its money.

Katya swayed on the toilet, and opening her eyes for balance, her claustrophobia met the Devil Himself in a whirl of tiny flowers. She clamped her lids shut, dropped her jaw and took belly-deep breaths to prevent screaming. Trouble is, I’m ordinary compared to these people. Bena, mad as a March hare, and Elizabeth… Sweet Jesus! Even Maude, especially Maude, I’m certain she knows better. And a Polish housekeeper who pretends to be Scotch. I’m out of my league with this bunch. Throw in Ziski, the Musical Snake, and there aren’t going to be enough apples left for a tart. I’m not cut out for this.

So, you’d rather know some other people. I think so. Some ordinary people. I think so. No, you don’t, you haven’t thought about this at all. I have. You haven’t. You’ve got one friend, Bena, and she’s never been ordinary, that should tell you something. And you want to play with Maude, and she’s the one got you into this in the first place, and now, just because her knife-wielding maniac sister wants to play hide-the-flute with the pie-eyed piper of Cracow, you want to know some other people. Umhum. And you don’t think that doing lunch for this crowd has already made you liable in any way? They haven’t eaten it yet. Oh, give yourself some air!

Okay, so I let them eat, then I’m out of it. Sure, if that’s what you want. It’s the only way. Okay. I’d better go help Missus Quaid lift the skins. Unhuh, wash your hands. Katya wiped and rinsed and wiped and escaped being crushed by tiny flowers.

Propped against the drainboard in Elizabeth Preston’s kitchen, a stem of white wine at his lips, Wit Ziski conducted business with a cigarette. Being a musician and under no obligation to understand, even hear, whatever was going on around him, he did, however, have quite perfect ears and the omnivorous ability to swallow whole meanings without comprehending a word. When working a room, he listened for need, for secret desire, for repressed fantasy and cries for help. He would turn to the sound of a reedy plaint with a sweep of a hand and fascinated discovery. He would eye like a doctor and listen for pitch changes and with further sweeps and beckonings of his slender, upheld hands he would draw in others to sound the depths of need and sanity, power and utility, tragedy and comedy, so that standing in a strange room, in a circle of newly-met strangers, if the reedy plaint first chosen rose with direction to show any solo efficiency, Ziski would attack sforzato with operatic imagery of the desperation of his own circus-like existence, and if the solo took to his melody, Ziski would assail that imagination until it burst vivace into a climax of commitment. A former stranger would say, “I will!”, and Ziski would need a cab.

“So, Katya,” Quietly, clearly over the rim of his glass, “You will be the manager and we will all be safe.”

“Spread your arms a little, like this,” Katya spread her elbows from a peak of tented fingers, “Do you know, you look something like a hooded cobra when you do that.”

“You are the best. I know this about you.”

“Or a Jesuit.”

“Yes, you will know all the important things.”

Or a glass-eyed turkey vulture, “I will?”

“Good.” Ziski tucked his cigarette in his mouth with a squint and freeing one of Katya’s hands, held and shook it with what appeared to be genuine gratitude, even affection. He shaped his wineglass at the wreckage of trout and bare crumb-sprinklings littering the table beside them, “Like the fish, I will catch it, you will cook it, and we will make people happy. Look,” His head nodded to Maude and Elizabeth glaring at each other, pretending not to hear, and to Bena who beamed gratification back at him, “Look how easy it is.”

Katya didn’t need to look. Attitudes had been set by Maude’s absolute insistence that they yank a few corks, break out the picnic and help themselves around the kitchen table. Ziski’s indiscriminate acquiescence and Bena’s assurance that it was a frequent practice in old chateaux, bent Elizabeth’s pretended intention of something more formal. A pretense which snapped when the boistrous Maude, poking for fun, thrust a stem of wine at Missus Quaid and told her to join in. Despite the possibilities offered, even the chance for a Polish joke or two, the housekeeper doubted her continued toleration in the job if her cover got blown, and she didn’t need to see Elizabeth’s eyes boring into her head to encourage her to hand over the glass and excuse herself with a polite murmur.

Katya had seen Elizabeth blanch at sight of two fishy eyeballs staring dead from a bed of cress in a silver platter, had seen Ziski’s lusting hunger, heard Maude’s spluttering laughter and Bena’s tambourine crash of approval. She had watched Elizabeth yank open packets, barely resisting the use of her teeth, packets of pale biscuits and odd looking things which nobody ate; heard her recommend bottles of sauces and pickles that might help the fish, and nobody opened those either, though Ziski offered his strength.

Maude and Ziski had filled and emptied their plates twice. Bena had vapoured over the fish which she ate with a great deal of dill mayonnaise before settling upon the lemon tarts, until Katya plucked the plate from her reach to offer to Elizabeth, who hadn’t cared to venture beyond the cheese straws and who now found herself thinking that if angels were lemon flavoured that’s how they’d taste, and that maybe this Katya woman might have a use. Katya hadn’t seen anyone palm food that fast since Sam was small.

Katya didn’t need to look, but she did anyway. Maude’s brow was roofed in expectation over the frame of her glasses. Bena’s body rocked affirmation and glowed with satisfaction. Elizabeth’s eyes glittered and one hand plucked at the other, but that was likely the tarts, and didn’t look antagonistic. They did, however, all seem rather close and Katya needed to remove her hand from Ziski’s clasp, to draw herself back and to find a deep breath.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t the skills, she knew what he wanted, she was neither foolish nor deaf. She had never doubted her administering abilities and clerkish affection for detail in all her years in the fur dealers’ offices. Her own domestic haphazardness had only escaped control après Sam, and it was really just a visual effect, for she unerringly knew the precise location and condition of every element of her household. If a ball of wool was at the bottom of a laundry basket buried beneath a stack of newspapers and an overflowing blue-box behind the porch door, that’s where it was and she knew it. No, Katya didn’t question herself, “So, who cleans it, the fish?” She aimed a finger at Ziski, “You catch it,” cocked a thumb at herself, “I cook it,” both hands spread, “Who cleans it?”

Wit wasn’t sure what she meant by worrying about who would clean the fish. Did she mean business, or did she really mean fish? Bena had told him that this woman knew how to run an office, how to organize and keep track, and that, he knew with good reason, was as important to any possibility of success as his own direction and conducting. The others could find their own usefulness, Katya was a necessity. He didn’t doubt she was perfectly capable of gutting her own fish, but he could afford the gallantry, “I will clean the fish.”

Now that was too easy, Katya huffed a sigh of exasperation. He really means the fish and I mean the dirty work, the knife in the guts of the operation. You need nerve and stomach, and you need sanity for the job. For godsake, look what Elizabeth got up to with a cheese knife and a rope! And who handed it to her, but her own sister. And who egged her on, but Bena. Together they nearly killed three people. They could’ve. They certainly destroyed a painting, and probably that poor artist woman… whatzer… Katherine, her career. It would’ve been a tragedy if the old woman hadn’t raised her walking stick and ripped it into farce.

Without taking her eyes off Ziski, Katya drew herself in and slightly away from Bena and Maude and Elizabeth. They’d snap this poor man like a pencil if they got into a scrap. Silly bugger probably thinks he can keep Missus Pushy wrapped around his finger, or his leg, talking the ‘princess’ bullshit, but he hasn’t seen her crack and go slashing at the arras like the rest of us have. And he and Bena may be old friends from the old country, old countries, plural, and they may even be an old romance, but her old blood’ll take him off at the waist if her honour’s at stake. And Maude thinks truth’s as funny as pretense. They could chew him and spit him before he got his hands out of his pockets, skinny little stick of a thing. Man’s going to dry up and blow away, if he doesn’t get some more food into him, eats like an urchin. And smokes like a chimney and drinks like a fish. Says he’ll do the dirty work. Sure. Maybe. Boys! Katya blew a disgusted breath, “Okay.”

What with Maude declaring herself Secretary of State to her sister’s little principality, exhuming her old Institute minute-taking days as credentials and insisting that the least she could do was relieve Katya of the burden of thinking it necessary to transcribe Elizabeth’s endless homilies on culture and meaning and shoes; what with Elizabeth’s acid reminder that she was President – the first syllable came out as ‘Prin’, before she caught it – and as such she could probably have Maude impeached, or something, she’d have to look in the rules; and what with Katya’s okay to managing the shop, Bena felt comfortable offering herself as Inspiration.

“Oh, good, the Music Fairy!” Elizabeth was still acid, having switched her glare from her mean-mouthed sister to this bandy-legged, mobile trinketry, “Tinkerbell!”

“Who has granted your wish. So far.” Distaining even a glance at ingratitude, Bena offered herself to Ziski, “Maestro, I would be your…?” She left her loss for a word open to interpretation.

“Muse! Of course you mean Muse, dear Bena. She means Muse, dear Maestro, how silly of me to think Fairy, why just the other day I…” Elizabeth sweated for correction, “…I couldn’t remember for the life of me. There’s Terpsicore for dancing, I believe, and there’s… Clio, is it? for something, and… and Errato? Yes. For what? Mistakes? Surely not, or is that who…” Her Liberty tie was soaked and turning clammy.

“Calliope, for the Circus, Lizzie,” Maude couldn’t help herself, her sister had been born backwards and forever needed turning around, “All asweat for the bells and whistles. Steam, Lizzie.”

“Oh…is that… Really…” Uncertain, her belt holding water, khaki wilted to her legs, Elizabeth missed her sister’s rolling eyes.

An arm sliced the air and Ziski ripened with affection, “Not a Muse, but a Grace, my Pimpuszka,” his heels actually clicked. Hands amazingly empty and folded one upon the other at his breast, he bent profoundly to his friend, “My Pimpuszka has always been a note of grace. She gave Paris to me when I did not know how to ask for it. Many times she has been the inspiration for me.”

“What exactly is this pimp push… whatever it is? Is it a title of some sort?” Elizabeth was keen.

“It is ‘sweetheart’, I think?” Ziski raised his shoulders in question, “mon petit chou, perhaps? It is the Polish word… ‘darling’, yes? I think.”

“Oh.” Elizabeth wasn’t keen, “That kind of inspiration.”

Black eyes beading with a twinkle, lips pressed on a chuckle, Ziski tucked his chin to his chest in Elizabeth’s honour, “You are the królowa osa, I think.”

“What does…?”

“The queen…uh…bzz, bzz…” His thumb and finger swept the air, “What is the name…?”

“Bee?” Elizabeth was wary, but hopeful.

“Blowfly.” Maude paused her glass at her lip to be helpful.

“No. I think you both are called this, you sisters. It is what you are called…” He flipped his hand to Bena, “…is it not how their ethnic name is? What is that?”

“Ethnic?” Elizabeth’s nose popped white at the knuckle.

Accustomed to supplying vocabulary for Bena’s flapping hands, Katya could jump language barriers and said without hesitation, “Wasp.” Ziski’s grinning affirmation made her think him perhaps not such a thin stick after all.

Bena glowered, “You are calling names again, I think, my Katya. Remember you are an ethnic lady who dresses too loud and carrys her bags in…”

“No offence, Bena,” Maude saluted her glass to the assembly, “It’s what we are, wasps, all sting and no honey.” “Ethnic?”

“Don’t start, Lizzie. Twin-sets, aspics and the two-step; costume, cuisine and dance, we’re as ethnic as the rest of them. Just because there’s no grant money doesn’t mean we don’t exist. We’re white, well, pink, I suppose, grey on a bad day. We’re Anglo-Saxon, if thin hair and wattles are the genetic code. You only bow to Rome for shoes, and I’ll only do it for reruns of I Claudius , so I think we’re still Protesting. We’re Wasp, all right, the self-chosen people. Blood’s thinning, but that’s maybe just you and me, too much inbreeding you get dry dugs and bleeders.”

“You are so vulgar, Maude! That’s our Heritage, for godsake! It does not make us ethnics. Ethnics are much more…” Elizabeth’s throat shut in horror, her eyes flicked from guest to guest and back to Maude whose wicked smile offered no help, “I don’t know… more… People of The Soil? Yes?” That sounded safe. Maybe. “Oh, good soil, of course! Unless, of course, the soil was bad and that’s why they’re here as ethnics. Oh, and Salt of The Earth, too, naturally, that’s…”

“For God sake, Lizzie! You were born a hundred yards from the barn. If anybody’s got mud on her shoes, it’s you. You know your problem? Well, one of them. You’ve got the words mixed up, ethnic, immigrant, you think they mean…”

“Oh, I think I know what I mean, Maude, dear, and Anglicans certainly aren’t ethnic.” Elizabeth dismissed her sister’s unhealthy drive to contradict and addressed herself to Bena, “Please don’t take offence, Countess, my sister has pretensions to understanding these things, but, well,” She whipped a look at Maude’s wine glass, “you can see her problem. You, of course, must be our Inspiration, you’re so obviously of that persuasion. D’you know palms?”

What Bena knew was that George, her friend, had had to spank this woman, his wife, and she could see why. Bena had come through more than one war walking, and she wasn’t about to be kicked over by any Missus Just-From-the-Barn. She eyed the wilted khaki skirt, the melting broadcloth, darkening leather and sodden madras neckerchief, “Perhaps, Madam President, you might wish to change your uniform. It is hot work, I think, slamming the ghetto door, it takes out the starch.” Down the long full length of her nose Bena held Elizabeth’s eye.

“You must listen to what I say now.” Bena’s eye was dry and unwinking, “There are many silly things we will say to one another, sometimes rude, but that is translation, we will learn. But the Spirit of Meanness, you know, She can have no place in our business. You would like, Elizabeth, I am sure, to dry up and change.” The tap dripped and a mouse was heard on the pantry floor. Bena was suddenly kind, “Perhaps, my Maude, you would be dear enough to your sister to help her to a fresh costume,” With a wave of the arms she rolled them through the doorway, “Perhaps something fuller. And warm would be nice.”

Discovering an unclaimed cheese straw among the plates on the table and offering it, Bena drew near to Ziski and Katya, “So, Witold,” She poked the pastry into his mouth, “The Who is Them, and the Why is Them, because you need a job and They can pay you. And Katya, a job for you will maybe keep you from the streets. So, did I find you a princess, Witold?” She accepted his deep bow with impatience, wasps could return with alarming suddenness, “Good. Yes. You must listen then,” The tips of her fingers brushed the Saint Catherine at her breast, “We can do this thing because we know how to do it. We will do it, Maestro, because you must make music. We have to do it because Katya is soon becoming a bag lady. I myself will do it…” She paused to listen for approach, “I will do it because these sisters amuse me and I think that between them they share a good heart. We will play with them and they will play with us. Yes?”

“So, except for the Pied Piper here we’re not into this for the love of music, or anything crass like that?” Katya could’ve used another cheese straw herself, “You’re into this so you can keep your mitts on her husband, aren’t you?”

Ziski pretended shock and teased Bena with a wounded look, “It is for love that you do this? Well…” He gave a little shrug, “…as long as it is love, it will come sometime to music. As long as it is love you will care, eh, Bena?”

“Well, I think we’re doomed. This’s downhill from the top. If this…” Stabbing a finger at Bena, Katya decided it was best to be clear, “…this gypsy, this Madwoman of Budapest, thinks she’s going to snatch Elizabeth Preston’s husband by pretending she’s Anastasia, we are going to go down in flames. Belly up. Doomed, I say.” She checked for Ziski’s attention and turned back, “I’ve said I’ll do my part, but I’m warning you, I’m not into this if you’re not going to behave. So, what’s your agenda, Bena?”

“Aacch, agenda, my Katya, so businesslike already, even though you must still call names. Perhaps you will have a nice tailored suit to wear and give up this bad habit. You know, my friend, that I would not claim to be Russian even if it would give me back my childhood. And I do not wish to ‘snatch’ George Preston. Really, my Katya… He is my friend. Witold is my friend. I have friends, Katya, I do not need to steal them. You must understand why this worrys you, but not now. We must know that we are agreed. Yes?” Bena cocked her head to listen and then with solemn ceremony offered her hands which were clasped affectionately by Ziski and reluctantly by Katya into a stack of cabal and she said, “For Music!”, and Ziski said, “For Love!”, and Katya said, “For godsake!”, pulled free and started clearing up plates.

“I don’t understand these people, Maude. D’ you think we’re safe with them?” Stripped, patted dry, and spraying herself, Elizabeth ran circles about her bedroom, waving things at her sister, “I mean, half the time I don’t know what they’re saying and it’s foolish to keep asking, the whole tone changes. And…” She held her breath and drew a line for a lip, “…speaking of tones… I don’t think much of yours. We are not ethnics, Maude, and we are certainly not the Chosen People, you know who they are. And I don’t like Wasp, it’s a cheap word. D’ you think this grey?” She twirled a skirt hanger to call her sister’s attention to a slate flannel A-line, “It’s warm. Or…” She twirled the identical fabric in box pleats.

“Yes.” Half squatting to rest on a slipper chair while her sister flew in and out of closets assembling a fresh outfit, Maude didn’t say yes again till she saw a plain white blouse, and had to heave herself up, when Elizabeth got lost among scarves and shawls and wraps, to rummage out a simple navy cardigan, all through the course of which, Elizabeth never stopped talking. “Will you shut up, Lizzie,” Maude was calm and elder, “You’re giving me a headache.”

“I think you’ve had rather a lot of wine.” She could provide almost any painkiller, but not yet.

“Don’t patronize me. It’s not the wine, it’s you. Your grasp on reality… I just don’t know. You’ve either got your hands on its throat, or you’re pulling its hair. You aren’t very good at embracing, are you, Lizzie? You just won’t go with the flow, you have to wag and wave and push upstream because you’re the Princess and it’s your game. Well, you need to grow up and stop being rude to people who didn’t go to school with you. It’s not just because you’re a pain in the ass, but you could get seriously hurt – people are nastier these days – and believe it or not, I wouldn’t like to see that happen.”

“Oh.” Elizabeth was offended, “So now I wag and wave, do I? I don’t think I know what you mean.”

Patience exhausted, Maude subsided again into a chair, “I should’ve wrapped the cord around your neck. I could’ve.”

I killed her. Elizabeth shrank so suddenly from the thought that she dropped the skirt she was buttoning at the waist. Her early, backward birth had been attended only by a nine year old Maude who coped with furnace and water and towels and didn’t have time to run to the barn for her father. Their father. Their mother, whose heart went with the last push. Maude had pulled and cut and washed her baby sister and never spoken a word about it, but when Elizabeth was old enough to understand the circumstances spoken of by others, spoken of in sorrow at the pity of it all, spoken of in wonderment at Maude’s precocious management, she knew that her sister blamed her. It had come at last, the accusation her sister had never spoken.

Knowing what her sister was thinking, what she’d always thought, Maude pretended not to notice, and hauling herself up again, headed for the hall, “Pull up your skirt and get a move on, you’ve got guests. I’m going to find an aspirin.”

“Oh, as many as you like, Maude, the bathroom cabinet, there’s extra-strength and coated things and… Uum, I have to change these shoes. I’ll be right along.”

When the Board returned to the table to make up some lists and put down some facts, the general mood had quieted to a somewhat embarrassed preoccupation with the details of headings, with experiments in penmanship and proper pencil alignment. Ziski brought out his pocket diary, a scuffed black push-button notebook, and read out for Katya useful names and numbers: art councils and officers, associations and boards, unions of celli and managers of halls.

Katya took the facts, checking on spellings and area codes.

Maude scribbled names and teased for bits of gossip.

Bena made a list of all the men she knew and some women who should gladly contribute money or favour, and if not gladly, she knew quite enough about them to prevail.

Elizabeth strained to be attentive and made herself draw a few charts to avoid chewing her pencil. Terrorized by what she had set in motion, she had no idea of what to grab hold of just to keep balance, let alone control. I was the one, she sniffed, who had the idea of an orchestra. I was the Inspiration. Pimpush, dahling! Bitch. Elizabeth surreptitiously glared around the table till her pencil stalled. I asked her if she knew any musical people. And he’s giving out the orders and she’s writing them down and god knows what Maude’s doing__ lists of mean things to say, most likely__ and Pushpin, what’s she writing? I’ll bet it’s not even English.

“Whoa, Maestro!” Maude flailed her writing arm, “Whose wife’s sister’s married to the Chairman of the Council? If she’s the woman I think she is, he’s not long for this world, poor bugger, she’s done-in two already. Council’ll need a new Chair before the year’s out, with that woman’s record. But hey, don’t mind me, use him while he’s still warm. What’s next, Wit?”

Bea had hunted the Yellow Pages for a salon that could fit her in, a place she’d never been, that wouldn’t know her from Adam and wouldn’t be shocked by her request for a colouring. And did they do a facial? She’d planned on something like a toasted bagel at the mall after, and then a search for some half-decent underpants in Sears, but when she emerged with a head of hair and a glow she hadn’t had in twenty years, she took herself instead to a smart lunch with a tablecloth.

Handed a menu, she offered a smile and asked for an old-fashioned, but seeing the flat eyes of the girl skid in a panic from the infection of age, she was quick to apologize, “I’m sorry, a glass of white wine. Could you? Please.” Opening the menu, she answered impatience, “I’ll take a moment. If you don’t mind?” Watching the waitress sulk to the bar, she thought, cheap shiney goods, and cringed for fear of having said it. Seeing no flinch in the narrow back, she wished she had.

Why don’t I have the nerve? I should’ve been born with it, God knows nothing’s ever stopped my mother from saying whatever comes into her head. Every mean thought she has just pops out with the time of day. ‘Will you have a piece of Dutch apple? Oh, there’s no point in you worrying about your hips. I’d do a covered pie for myself, but I made this for you, you don’t want the extra pastry.’ And Katherine’s no better, always bringing up things nobody wants to hear. It’s all about sex and how hard-done-by she is. It’s David’s fault her marriage is falling apart, it’ll be everybody’s fault her picture fell down, and it’s always my fault she was born. I couldn’t be more guilty if I tried. “I’ll have the chicke… no, the veal parmegian, please. Yes, I will have another glass, thank you.”

When she’d finished up with a lemon mousse that she’d gladly have eaten twice, she went off to search cosmetic counters for a shade of lipstick, any shade of lipstick that wasn’t her inevitable orangee. She knew that the counter girls were painted for the sake of the product and for the dreadful lighting, but really, talk about dressing mutton, I didn’t know the circus was in town. The second glass of wine had made her bold, “I expect you do parties?” And of course they did, nail parties and make-over parties, a friendly circle and a nice refreshment table, and if she was really serious about saving her beauty, they were going to be holding their first injection party ASAP and would she… She escaped with a shampoo sample and drove back to Bert’s garage and took a drink of rye and gingerale standing in the office corner where there was no thought of sitting for the grease. She drove home just at dark, figuring George would’ve had to retreat.

And he had. Dawdling into the wharf behind the hardware, George had watched a pair of lads toss the scrap of Bea’s dock into a pick-up backed to the riverbank. But there was no sign of Bea, and the house looked shut. When his shopping was done, he chanced a call from a payphone, and after ten empty rings, took heart that at least she didn’t have a damned fool answering machine. When she’s not there, she’s not there. He dawdled out again and the lads were gone and he watched the current nudge itself around the point unhindered by any evidence that he had ever been there. I could hang around for a while, have a drink, eat something, try again. The thought of another cautious putt-putting return in the dark didn’t appeal again so soon. Last night with Bob Ross’s punch in him, he’d been well enough warmed to enjoy the slow run up-river, his pulse tuned to the bow wave, his mind on Bea. And a young lad wouldn’t have thought twice about a repeat, but George had frozen peas and juice to think of, he’d phone later.

Bea had to phone her daughter. She didn’t want to. In fact, she frankly didn’t care if she never spoke to Katherine again, never saw her again. You don’t mean that. I do. I think I’d be quite satisfied enough to know she’s alive. After the other night, I’d just as soon not have to be bothered knowing her anymore. Isn’t that awful, your own daughter? Goes for my mother, too. Why do I have to care? Because you do. Do what? Do have to? Do care! But I don’t care. I certainly don’t care to have to. Oh Lord, woman! Just call her, she’s your daughter. Yes. George got his juice and his peas into the freezer before he tried calling Bea again. When he did, the line was busy.

What Bea got was Katherine’s machine, “…I’m not home, I may never be home again. I don’t know who’ll feed the pitbulls. Have a nice day,” and after a hiss, “I’m fine, Mother. Really.”

Despite a thundering hang-over and a very dim memory of the previous evening, Martin had begun nagging about bus schedules around noon with his second cup of instant coffee, when he realized that that was what he was drinking. In the pain of dislocation, the awkwardness of waking in a strange bed, in a strange house, in a strange town, amongst strangers, he had found himself translating the gut-strung tension of never having dared drop-kick one of his mother’s corgis into the act of balancing his coffee mug at the table’s edge. But Paul’s mother’s decision to drive down to a sister, shop, visit and stay over, had relieved his burden of anxiety, that fear of incurring maternal censure that good boys are trained to. When she had finally gone out the door the third time with enough keys, Martin had been so relieved he asked for more coffee and got chatty. Wrapped in warm gossip, time called truce till tomorrow and the issue of Katherine’s betrayal.

The day then went well. Deciding to be Christian about it and cobble a silk purse out of a sow’s ear of a situation, Paul toured Martin through Bannock on a walk to the liquor store for something they could drink with the pork he’d dug out of his mother’s freezer. He pointed out a cul-de-sac here, told of a youthful indiscretion there, charmed Martin into the belief that his condescension was acceptable. And so, the long slow simmering of chops in mushroom soup, Martin agreeably peeling potatoes in a haze of white wine and cigarettes, the smoke of a joint, the weight of food, the story telling, at last melted into a pile of cushions laid before the wood fire, and although Paul thought Martin tiresome and rather too girlish, he did have quite a decent cock so what the hell, and the heat and wine finally silenced Martin to moans when he came in Paul’s mouth. Then it was Tuesday.