THE NEXT NIGHT, MAUREEN PUT ON A TON OF MAKEUP to try to cover her bruises and convinced George to go to a party with her. Roger “Booman” Tate was having his life-ending, soul-crushing annual Christmas party. She hadn’t been back there since Bo had given her that awful first beating, but she was going back now because she had a plan. She thought that if she could just get in with one of the DAFT boys and have a snoop, maybe even scout out something at the party, she could find out . . . what? She didn’t know, but if she could just screw her courage to the sticking post—or was it stick her courage to the screwing post? She was never sure—and manage to brave that dreadful place again, maybe she could discover something. She knew from experience that if you poked around long enough and deep enough, you would always come up with something, like when she and Carleen first went up to Montreal, to Expo, and were staying at that convent. Maureen went poking through Carleen’s stuff and found her diary and Maureen saw her name.
Me and Reenie hitchhiked out to the bar at the Fort Motel. They didn’t ask for IDs—they didn’t even have anyone on the door. Reenie was afraid to go in, but I just pushed her through. It is so fab in there. They have these groovy phones on the tables and every table has a number and you can just phone over to someone. Like guys can just call you on the phone if they want to buy you a drink or something. Two old gnarly guys called us—Jesus, we got about a million drinks off ’em. I gave Reenie the high sign just as the old fellas were moving in for the kill. We went in the toilet and crawled out the window and ran down the TransCanada laughing so hard we almost pissed ourselves. Three guys in a Pontiac picked us up by the Crossroads, they wanted us to go down to the Kingsbridge Hotel to party but Reenie the Weenie wouldn’t go. She is such a drag. She had to be home by 10:30 because she told her old lady that she was down to the Gosling library, studying.
Maureen kept skimming through the diary, looking for her name. She stopped at another entry.
Yesterday morning I came to in a tent in Butter Pot Park, half my clothes off, a big blond dead-eyed guy with a knife was sitting on a sleeping bag next to me. Oh God, I thought I was fucked, but turned out he wasn’t going to kill me, he was driving that knife into his own leg—not deep, just a little. But where were Reenie and the Musketeers? I remembered being so loaded I kept falling down. So did they just fuck off and leave me there? I would never do that to Reenie. She’s my friend. If she was fucked up, I’d look after her.
When Maureen read that, so bald on the page, she felt so bad she tried to immediately justify it to herself, like she was on the stand or something, getting the third degree—justify it because Carleen was being such a pain in the hole that night. She was so embarrassing, Maureen felt ashamed that Dicey and them would think Maureen was like that. They were all drunked up and out camping in Butter Pot Park for the 24th. Maureen was having a great time with the Musketeers, being all loaded and tough, but Carleen kept falling down and crying, and then when Maureen would haul her back up on her feet, she’d start bawling even harder and then down she’d go again. Sam and Sara knew some guys from Mundy Pond, and the girls stumbled into those guys’ tent. Maureen was surprised to see the good-looking twin, the nice one from the frat house. Maureen said hi, but he didn’t respond, didn’t even look up.
“Stoned,” Dicey said. “Probably magic mushrooms.”
They stayed for a while and then Dicey wanted to leave to go find Trevor, Sara’s brother. Trevor and them had a couple of cases of beer in their tent. Sara didn’t want to go because it was her brother, but Dicey said it was where the best party was going to be.
Maureen tried to get Carleen up on her feet and out of that tent, but she just couldn’t manage it. Each time she got Carleen up, she collapsed to the ground again. The Musketeers had left and Maureen wanted to catch up with them, wanted to keep partying and was more than half in the bag herself. So she left Carleen there in the tent with those guys and she never even checked back. Maureen came to in the morning with Sara and Sam in their own little pup tent. There was no sign of Dicey or Carleen. It was hard for Maureen, reading that stuff in Carleen’s diary, to justify her behaviour. Maureen realized that if she kept reading other people’s private stuff, she might be forced to face stuff about herself that she just didn’t want to see. Snooping, something Maureen had started in order to soothe herself, to give herself the feeling that she knew what was going on, that she was ahead of the game, that she was on top of it, was now just causing her more trouble.
NO ONE AT THE CHRISTMAS PARTY KNEW YET THAT BO was dead—the police hadn’t released the name of the victim, pending contacting the family. No one, Maureen thought, looking around warily, no one except me, George, the police and whoever did it. Maureen usually hated parties. She figured she hadn’t really enjoyed a party since Frances Dearrin’s birthday party over at the SUFU Hall on Campbell Avenue back in 1963, when there had been unlimited amounts of Pepsi and egg salad sandwiches and the goody bags were full of great stuff. No, she didn’t like parties anymore, and especially not here. She hated this place. She’d felt sick as soon as she got here, but she was determined to do what she came here to do. She walked into Booman’s room to put her coat on the bed with everyone else’s and was just starting to have a quick poke around when she was interrupted by Jack and Deucey Dunne coming in to drop off their jackets. Maureen hadn’t seen Jack since that time at the frat when she was fifteen and Jack had said that awful thing about his forearm. Maureen felt the heat rising in her face just thinking about it.
Deucey was all banged up. He had a fat lip and there were bruises on his face turning yellow, but he looked better than he had that time in Butter Pot Park. His eyes were more alive, more with it. Maureen walked up to Deucey. Oh my God, is that a bit of his ear gone? Yes, she could see that the bottom bit of his earlobe was completely missing.
“Maureen Brennan, whaddya at?” Deucey said.
Jack turned toward Maureen and gave her a long, slow look. “Mo-reen.”
“Jack.” Maureen nodded. She turned to Deucey.
“Not much. How you doin’, Deucey? I mean, Dave. Do people still call you Deucey, Dave?”
“No, that’s my name. Nobody but Mom calls me Dave anymore. Right, Jacky?” he said to his twin, who was headed out of the bedroom.
“I haven’t seen you since that 24th of May up in Butter Pot,” said Maureen.
“Oh yea?”
“You probably don’t remember.”
“Yea, I don’t remember much about back then.” Deucey looked really uncomfortable. “I got committed right after that, and it was all pretty hazy for about eighteen months or so.”
Maureen was taken aback but tried to act as if the fact that he’d been locked up in a mental institution for eighteen months didn’t freak her right the fuck out.
“Are you all right now?”
“Yea, I’m good now. It was all the acid, you know? And the shrooms. Turns out thirty hits of purple microdot is too much acid for one Friday night.”
Maureen just kept looking at him with a smile pasted on her face.
“It’s a joke, Maureen. You know. I didn’t do thirty hits of acid in one night—close though.”
Maureen was really uncomfortable around mental illness, and even talk of mental illness. She tried to change the subject.
“What happened to your nose?” Maureen asked.
“It was just a really rough game of b-ball. Pickup game with the crowd from Mundy Pond. They play basketball like they’re playin’ hockey. It’s like they always got the gloves off, headin’ into the corner.”
“They don’t wear gloves in basketball, though, do they?” Maureen said, and then quickly laughed, realizing how stupid she sounded. “Just joking. Ha-ha. Yea, Mundy Pond.”
“Yea . . . There’s a guy from Mundy Pond and a guy from The Brow in a car. Who’s drivin’? . . . The cop,” Deucey said.
“Yea, Mundy Pond, where they tie on the dogs and let the kids run free,” Maureen said.
“What?”
“Oh, I always get things arse-backwards. I mean, jumpins, where they tie on the kids and let the dogs run free. Mundy Pond, heh, right?”
“It was funnier the first way,” Deucey said.
“Yea.”
“Where’s Bo to?”
“Oh, Bo’s . . . out in Grand Falls doing a job for his old man,” said Maureen as a picture of Bo trussed up in the trunk of his Renault raced across her mind. But that awful picture didn’t cause Maureen to miss a beat because, apparently, she’d become so cold and untroubled by conscience, or even by Bo’s death and her role in it, that nothing these days could give her pause. Maureen’s heart sank, and for a moment she was lost in thought.
“Is he?” said Deucey.
“What?” Maureen said, coming back to the conversation.
“Is he in Grand Falls?”
“Yea, I think. I don’t really know. We’re broke-up.”
“Yea? Now you’re broke-up and broke up.”
“What?” said Maureen.
“You know,” Deucey said, looking straight at the black eye Maureen thought she had so cleverly concealed.
“Bo . . .,” Deucey began, starting to look uncomfortable. “Like, people say that he, you know, gets pretty physical with you, so he broke up your body and now you’re broke-up—get it? I—”
“Oh, yea,” Maureen interrupted him. “Funny. Where’s the bathroom?”
“Whaddya gonna have a bath?” said Deucey.
“No.”
“Well, whaddya wanna go to the bathroom for?”
Oh God, for such a good-looking guy, Deucey Dunne was a real pain in the hole sometimes, Maureen thought. But at the same time, she was burning with embarrassment that everyone could see what had happened to her. They could just gawk at her bruises and her disgrace. Sure, Deuce was all beat-up too, but Maureen knew in her heart that it was way different for a fella. And then she had to go and top it off by saying “bathroom” instead of “toilet.” She’d rather die than have other people think that she was one of those mealy-mouths who wouldn’t say shit even if their mouth was full of it. From now on, she’d call the bathroom “the head” or maybe even “the shitter.”
“The toilet, I mean, of course. Toilet. Where’s the toilet? Do you know?”
“Yea, just back that way,” Deucey said. “There’s a bath in there too, if you’re feelin’ dirty.” He moved in on her. “Are you feelin’ dirty, Maureen?”
She pushed past him into the bathroom. Jesus, what the fuck was wrong with her? Why would he, out of the blue, come on to her like that? She sat down on the toilet. She was an idiot, nothing but a fucking idiot. She was going to jail and she probably deserved to be locked up. She sat there, her drawers down around her ankle bones, and thought, I could just keep calling myself down to the lowest, just keep the you’re-an-idiot voice going, or I could haul up my drawers, go out there and suck up to Deucey Dunne and see if I can find out anything about what really happened to Bo.
The door opened. Maureen let out a little scream. George was standing there.
“I’ve decided, even if you did do it, I’m personally going to find you not guilty, like Holmes and Watson found Captain Croker in ‘The Adventure of the Abbey Grange’ not guilty.”
“I’m using the bathroom . . .,” Maureen said.
“Bo was a brute who constantly abused you in every conceivable way,” George continued, uninterrupted, “and so for you to take any action to get yourself free from the power of that madman is justifiable. And so, I pronounce myself judge and jury and find you not guilty: vox populi, vox Dei. You are acquitted, Maureen Brennan, and may your future actions justify me and the judgment I have pronounced this night.” Just that day, George had started reading a Sherlock Holmes story called “The Adventure of the Abbey Grange.”
“Shure I’m not guilty,” said Maureen, still on the toilet. “I didn’t do it, or I’m pretty sure I didn’t do it, anyways. You don’t have to pronounce anything, George. Go on! Get out of the bathroom, will ya?”
George walked across the bathroom and hugged Maureen to him. Her face was crushed against his belly while her drawers were still around her ankles. The bathroom door opened again and in walked Deucey Dunne.
“Oh, sorry to interrupt. Geez, b’ys. You don’t have to go at it in the toilet; Booman got three or four bedrooms.”
“You didn’t interrupt anything, except me, desperately trying to have a pee.”
“And you need someone to hold on to you so as you can do that? You’re a big girl now, Maureen. You should be able to manage that on your own.”
“Will you both just get the fuck out?”
“It didn’t take you too long to get a new fella on the go,” Deucey shot back on his way out the door.
“George is not my fella. He’s just a friend!” Maureen yelled.
“I’m not your fella?” George asked, looking all downhearted and droopy as he walked through the door.
“Christ, close the door, will ya . . . Please! . . . I’M ON THE TOILET.”
People at the party turned and looked, Maureen was so loud. Finally, George closed the door.
Maureen stayed another minute on the toilet, thinking that if she could get Deucey to take her home with him, maybe she could get a look around his place and . . . Again, she didn’t know exactly what she might find or even what she was looking for. But there’s always clues, isn’t there? her mind said. Deucey’s bitten ear—that was a clue, a real Bo move. Many times, Bo had been in such a rage and so liquored up and out of it, that he actually bit down on whatever was unlucky enough to be in front of him. Not only had he taken a piece out of Maureen’s ear, but when he was younger, before he’d even started drinking, he took a big chomp out of his sister Sara’s cheek and it got all infected and pus-y and scabby and looked awful for weeks. Sara said they’d thought she might have to get plastic surgery. The human bite is filthy. “Nothing so dirty as the human mouth,” the Sarge always said. Rage-filled biting was Bo’s MO and someone had bitten Deucey.
When she came out of the bathroom, George was standing there waiting, still in full sulk. “Stop being such a sook. What is wrong with you?” Maureen asked him under her breath.
“Nothing.” George didn’t look up.
“Well then, why have you got a face on you like a slapped arse?” said Maureen, channelling the Sarge. “I need you to get lost. I’ve got work to do.”
George’s bottom lip pouted out even further, if that was possible.
Maureen took a deep breath and whispered, “I need to find a way to get to Deucey’s so I can have a look around his place, try to find out what happened. You’ve got to scram, go home. I need you to help me. Remember? That’s why we are here,” she said, setting her face into what she imagined was a simpering-damsel-in-distress look. “I need you to help me by going home now.” She moved in even closer to George. “I’ll meet you back there. Later.”
Maureen looked away and caught Deucey’s eye. She gave George a little push and sailed across the room in Deucey’s direction.
“So, you almost got drafted into hockey, did ya. I heard—”
“No. That was Jack.”
“Oh, I heard that was you.”
“They wanted Jack to play Junior A with the Toronto Oaks, but he wouldn’t go.”
“Wow! Really? Why not?” Maureen asked, already knowing the answer.
“He didn’t want to, I guess. Here, have a toke.”
Maureen did and proceeded to drink a lot of whisky and smoke a lot more dope.
As Deucey got drunker, he started talking more about him and Jack and how close they were. Maureen was jealous that anyone would have someone they felt that much connection with and were that close to. It made Maureen feel even more lonely and lost. She was too busy attending her own private pity party and wasn’t really paying attention when Deuce said, “We shared a single placenta.”
“Well, that would make you close,” Maureen said, trying to stop feeling sorry for herself and start getting the job done.
“One egg,” Deucey said.
“What?”
“One egg. We are just one egg split in two. Me and Jack. Jack and me. Oh yea, it’s all Jack, Jack, Jack with ’em,” he muttered drunkenly, “but he wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for me.”
Maureen wasn’t quite following, but at the end of the night, she went home with him.