THE NEXT TIME MAUREEN SAW DEUCEY WAS AT BO’S funeral service. She was sitting up in the front with Mrs. Browne, who seemed even more out of it than usual, and Art, who was sobbing openly. For some odd reason, Sara was sitting in the pew behind, holding up Dicey Doyle, who looked on the point of collapsing from grief. Sam Fleming was there too, on Dicey’s other side. Dicey seemed even more devastated than Mr. Browne. Maureen found that strange, but then again, the whole funeral had an odd, even unreal, feel to it.
Maureen hadn’t seen the Three Musketeers in months. Really, she hadn’t seen anybody for months, because she was either too bruised, too hungover or too drunk, and on top of that, Bo didn’t really want anyone at the house and he didn’t want her hanging out with anybody else. She felt sad seeing them there and missed having friends—if she could ever really call the Musketeers friends. Before she got in tack with Bo, they all used to tool around in Sara’s T-Bird, and because Maureen was Dicey’s friend, Sam and Sara let her hang around with them. They all jammed up together in the front seat, and Maureen sat by herself in the back. They let her know in no uncertain terms that she was not really one of the Three Musketeers. It was “all for one and one for all” but none for Maureen, apparently. She seemed to be the only one who knew that there was actually a fourth Musketeer, the most important Musketeer, the one who actually said “all for one and one for all,” the one all the books were written about: d’Artagnan. Maureen would sit, a little bit smug, in the back seat of the T-Bird, thinking she was d’Artagnan, the most interesting Musketeer, but she was careful to keep that thought to herself. The girls—mostly Sam and Sara—had made it clear how boring they found that kind of talk and that she’d better not interrupt them to go on about books and old nonsense, or she might not even manage to make it into the lousy back seat.
Not just Jack and Deucey, but all the DAFT boys were at the funeral. Deucey winked at Maureen as she walked down the aisle behind the coffin. Dear God, how could he? At a funeral. Maureen blushed with embarrassment. The cops were in the church too. They gave her a hard look as she passed them.
Maureen knew it was a mortal sin to think ill of the dead, but for all that, she couldn’t feel bad that Bo was . . . gone. If he hadn’t been . . . done away with, would she ever have gotten away from him? It struck her that morning that, sooner or later, it probably would have been her there in the box. Maybe he wouldn’t have done it on purpose, but really, how many flights of stairs can you be thrown down over before your neck finally breaks? How many times had he choked her till she almost passed out? Oh, never mind goin’ there now, she thought to herself. For all the crocodile tears I’m going to have to shed here today and for all the bullshit I’m gonna have to spew at the funeral, I will not miss him—not the one little bit.
The night after the funeral, Maureen told George she was going down to the Black Swan Inn to meet up with someone she knew who was home for Christmas. The Black Swan, tucked in on the side of the War Memorial, was tarted up to look like some kind of English pub or something. It was Friday night, so Wally Brownley and his band were playing. They were all Yanks, Wally and them. They had been stationed at Fort Pepperrell during the war and then stayed on in Newfoundland—probably married Newfoundland girls. They played jazz standards and old favourites, and Frankie, who owned the Black Swan, loved them. As the night wore on and Frankie drank more and more, he would try to make everyone get up to slow dance, and then he’d stand in the middle of the dancers and shake Red Roses talcum powder from the tin so that, he explained, the dancers’ feet could move with greater ease. Maureen sat to the bar, and Rita, Lovely Rita Meter Maid—bar maid, actually—was standing there in her glory, because Rita had worked down at the base for the Yanks, and listening to Wally’s band always brought her back to better times. Rita was in such a good mood, she didn’t even bother to ask Maureen for her fake ID; she just asked her what she wanted. Maureen burst into tears.
“I don’t know,” she said.
Rita looked at her with concern but also with irritation. The band was playing “A Sunday Kind of Love,” and buddy on the big xylophone thing was really givin’ ’er.
Maureen didn’t want to keep irritating Rita, so she ordered a beer. “But I don’t really like beer,” she said. “Old bellywash, Dad calls it. But I can’t start right in on the whisky right off the bat, just like that.” She could see she was really getting on Rita’s nerves now. “A jockey club, Rita. That’s what I’ll have, a jockey club.”
Maureen took her first sip and, right away, wished she’d ordered the whisky. She loved that burning, the heat that spread through her chest, and that big letting go she felt after she took her first sip of hard liquor. You’d have to drink a dozen beer to get that, and by the time you choked back a dozen, you’d be bloated up like a big pig and vomiting your guts out somewhere, but really, she couldn’t afford to let go like that, not tonight, because she had thought it all through lying awake next to George last night, her mind going a mile a minute, making it hard to get to sleep. And when she’d thought it through, she realized she was still no further ahead. Shure she’d seen that bill of sale for the boat at Deucey’s—and hadn’t Bo said something about a boat and the DAFT crowd that night he’d been in a rage because they wouldn’t make him a partner? She felt in her heart and soul that she was right on the edge of seeing it all make sense, but she didn’t really have much to go on, did she? She needed to dig deeper. If she could get Deucey to take her home with him again, maybe she could have a better poke around. She’d wait here and if Deucey didn’t show up, she’d go down to Dirty Dick’s and see if he was down there, or he might be down at the Trot ’n’ Pace.
A gaggle of young women came through the door. They were all busy comforting someone in obvious distress. Oh fuck. The one being comforted was Fluff Dawe, Bo’s old girlfriend. Fluff and Bo had gotten together in Grade 8 and had stayed together all through high school and into university and were supposedly just getting back together when Bo got with Maureen. “Juicy Joyce” Maynard, Carleen’s sister, was part of Fluff’s crowd, and she shot Maureen a look of such meanness as they passed that Maureen thought, Jesus, the way she’s lookin’ at me, you’d think I killed Bo. Oh, that’s right, she thought, her heart sinking, maybe I did.
After the girls settled in at their table and ordered drinks and continued to make comforting noises at and around Fluff, Maureen could feel them all looking darts over at her. Fluff’s crowd had always been mad at Maureen because Bo had dumped Fluff for a younger model. Not knowing what gave her the guts, Maureen turned around on her bar stool, intending to stare them down. But by the time she did, they were all looking down at their drinks or at each other, except for Joyce. Joyce just stared back at Maureen. Joyce had never known the back-down. Maureen and Carleen had thought Joyce was so cool, they looked up to her. Seeing Joyce made Maureen feel lonely for Carleen. She figured she must still be up in Montreal, being a secretary/piece of tail for that dirtbag club owner/mail-order porn sleezoid, who Maureen now suspected might be face and eyes in tack with the DAFT crowd. Perry had said that night Fox was working with him, and somehow or other, it must all fit together, but Maureen didn’t know how.
Maureen, lost in thought, continued to stare right into Joyce’s eyes. Joyce owned her own business, a store, Boutique Artistique, the first head shop in St. John’s and the hippest place on the whole island. So cool that Maureen didn’t like to go in there; she always felt that Joyce and them could see right through her and knew she was still just a greaseball Corner Boy from Princess Street. For all the peace, love and groovy stuff she tried to get on with, at any moment the thin veneer of the Summer of Love could peel off and reveal the real Maureen. She’d never even dropped acid and had only started smoking hash regularly last year, on the same night she’d had her first piece of pizza—both of them burned the mouth off her. By the time the joint got to her, it was tiny. She sucked it in hard like she saw everybody else doing, and then “Jesus, OW!” she dropped the joint and yowled with pain, which just made everybody laugh until tears were streaming down their faces. A pizza parlour, Napoli’s Pizza, had just opened up the steps from the Black Swan, and when she took her very first bite of Italian food, she managed to burn her lips again on the nuclearly hot, gooey, delicious, stringy cheese that was hanging off her slice. Bo used to joke that the best Italian food in St. John’s was made by people who’d actually heard of Italy.
Joyce had everything in Boutique Artistique: shirts like they wore at Woodstock, those flat leather Jesus shoes, those big coats from Afghanistan with all that curly fur on the inside of the leather that stank of sheep and exotic places in the Middle East—people said that someone had been bitten by a snake hidden in the curly fur, but Maureen didn’t care, she wanted one anyway—and those rings that had chains that joined up to a bracelet on your wrist. Going into that store was like travelling to another country, and you could get high on the smell of patchouli, jasmine, dirt, sheep and some kind of poopy smell like that Hare Krishna incense. She’d gone to the store with Bo just after they’d started going out together. Joyce hadn’t seemed happy to see them.
“Joyce,” Bo said, “how’s it goin’?”
“Oh, it’s goin’. Have you seen Fluff lately, Bo?” Joyce asked.
“No, I haven’t, Joyce. I’ve been kinda busy lately,” Bo said, putting his arm around Maureen and drawing her close.
Joyce leaned across the counter, moving her face in right next to Bo.
“Fellas like you, Bo, fellas like you, they should be neutered.” Joyce smiled. “Oh yes, they should just round your kind up, bring you all into the veterinarians and have you all de-balled.”
Bo made a menacing move with his chin toward Joyce but she didn’t even blink. She just stood her ground, staring right back at him, and he was the one who had to do the back-down.
“Come on, let’s get the fuck out of this shithole,” he said, pulling Maureen out the door. Just before he left, he turned around, picked up a ceramic Buddha head, teal blue it was, and threw it with force and purpose at the full-length mirror. The head smashed to smithereens and the mirror broke into shards and crashed to the floor.
“Bo!” Maureen gasped. “What’d you do that for? Bo?”
Spittle was flying out of Bo’s mouth, and his feet and hands were moving around spasmodically. He was so angry, so agitated, just vicious. He was in a red rage and Maureen felt afraid, very afraid. But at the same time, a part of her believed she would be all right, that she’d be safe. Because, he loved her—didn’t he?
IN THE BLACK SWAN, JOYCE WAS TALKING TO FLUFF AND nodding in Maureen’s direction. Fluff got up from the table and walked toward Maureen. Oh fuck. What now?
“Hello, Maureen.”
“Hiya, Fluff,” Maureen said in a high and fake-y sort of voice.
“I just wanted to come over and say how sorry I am for your loss. I saw you at the wake the other day, but I never got a chance to talk to you.”
“Oh, thank you, Fluff. I . . . uh . . . I mean, we were, Bo and me were broken up so . . .”
“Oh, he never told me that.”
“Oh, well, it just happened. Tuesday, just before . . . When were you talkin’ to Bo?”
“He called on Tuesday afternoon.”
“Oh, we broke up Tuesday morning.”
“Funny he never said, though I didn’t get to talk to him that long. He had to go.”
“Where was he goin’?”
“Oh, someone was at the door, it was a meeting, or he was meeting someone. I’m not sure now. I didn’t know then that it was the last time I’d ever get to talk to Trevor.”
Fluff called Bo Trevor. She was the only one. Now here she was, standing in front of Maureen, dissolving into tears again. Maureen didn’t know what to do. She half-heartedly patted Fluff on the shoulder.
“You’re so strong, Maureen. How d’you do it?” Fluff said.
“Do it?”
“Keep going, I mean.”
“Oh, well, I think it’s what Bo would have wanted.” Was there a phrase book of bullshit remarks that she’d inadvertently swallowed since Bo’s death? Where did all this empty nonsense come from? She stood up, put her arm around Fluff and walked her back to her table of friends and comforters. Joyce thanked Maureen in that off-putting, direct way of hers.
“You seem to be holding up pretty good, Maureen.”
“Yea, well, Joyce, what else can you do?”
Maureen felt rather than heard the door open and Jack and Deucey Dunne come in. With a sense of relief, she turned away from Joyce and them and walked over to Deucey.
“Whaddya at, Deuce?”
“Not much, Maureen. Whadda you at?”
“Lookin’ for you.”
“Oh, yea?”
“Yea.”
Jack stepped up to Maureen, leaned in and said through gritted teeth, “Yea, and the cops came lookin’ for us too, right after the funeral yesterday.”
“Did they?”
“Did they?” Jack mocked her. “Yes, they did, Maureen.” He took a step in closer. “And why do you think the coppers came lookin’ for us?”
“I don’t know,” Maureen practically whispered.
“What? Speak up, Maureen. You don’t have no trouble speakin’ up when you’re talkin’ to the cops, have ya, rat?”
Suddenly, the club was quiet, the band having gone on break, and everybody heard Jack call out Maureen.
“I never said anything—”
“That’s not what the pigs were sayin’.”
“I just said that Bo had problems with lots of people, and like he had a problem, like, with Deucey.”
Deucey was standing back, just looking on. He looked deeply uncomfortable with the way the conversation was going. His eyes were darting back and forth like he was looking for a way to escape. He raised his hands in a this-got-nothing-to-do-with-me kind of gesture.
Jack moved even closer to Maureen. “Next time you’re talking to your piggy pals, Mo-reen”—he poked his short, stubby finger into Maureen’s chest with enough force to drive her back a step—“you leave me and Deucey out of it.”
Joyce was suddenly standing between Maureen and Jack.
“Back off, Jack. Leave her alone.”
“None of your business, Juice. This is between me and her.”
“Well,” said Juicy Joyce, “now it’s between you and her and me.”
The club was so quiet, Maureen could hear her heart beat. Jack gave Joyce one long look, grabbed Deucey by the arm, gave Maureen a final poke in the chest and walked out the door.
“Are you all right?” asked Joyce.
“Yea, yea,” said Maureen. She turned half pleadingly to Joyce. “I don’t know why I can’t keep my big mouth shut. It’s like as soon as I think it, I gotta say it.” Joyce caught Maureen’s eye. “All I said to the cops, Joyce, was that Bo was mad at—”
“Maureen, Maureen, you’re doin’ it again. Don’t be tellin’ everybody everything, okay?”
“All right, all right,” Maureen said and, with great effort, stopped talking. She stood there for an awkward moment and finally said, “How’s Carleen? Do you guys ever hear from her?”
Joyce’s face darkened.
“Is she still up in Montreal with that fella, Joyce?”
“No, no she’s not.”
“Oh, is she home?”
“She’s not home.” Joyce turned away.
Maureen just barely stopped herself from saying, “Well, where is she then?” Some word that Maureen could never remember was supposed to be the better part of valour. But you’re so far away from being whatever that word is, Maureen’s brain said to her, that you don’t even know that word.
“Discretion,” Maureen said. Out loud, she realized.
“What?” Joyce turned.
“Nothing, just a word.”
Joyce looked like she was going to say something, but instead started back to the table.
“Well, say hi to Carleen when you talk to her.”
Joyce didn’t answer. Maureen turned and sat back down at the bar. Well, I’m just gonna sit to myself here at the bar and not talk to anyone.
“Rita, can I have a whisky please? Oh, no, no, no, Rita, I won’t have a whisky. I’ll have a Glenfiddich.”
“Which is a whisky,” Rita said.
“Yea, but it’s a special whisky. And that’s what I want: a special whisky . . . a special double whisky.”
As soon as Maureen had a mouthful, she felt that wonderful I-don’t-give-a-fuck-about-anything-or-anyone feeling spread right through her, and with a thud, finally her heart fell out of her throat and back into the spot where it was supposed to be.