In the back of the Press Club, under a cover of ferns, Scott could hear a couple flirting. “I met my boyfriend at sculpting class.” The woman laughed an airy laugh that sounded forced. “We had to do each other’s heads.”
“Ahhh, that sounds romantic.” The man feigned enchantment.
“It was, but now whenever we move we have to cart these big plaster heads.” Another laugh, which added a tinkle of whimsy. “Monstrosities that weigh ten pounds.”
“Ahhh, love.” As the man sighed, Scott stole a glance at the couple. The man was Michel Coté, a national newspaper correspondent from Montreal, banished to the boondocks, where women and intermittent marine disasters were his only solace. Short and dark, Michel had a habit of running a hand up his forehead, brushing back his hair and, with it, the problems of the world.
“Mine doesn’t even look like me,” the woman complained, and Michel rewarded her with a sympathetic pout.
The door buzzer sounded and a TV anchorwoman in orange makeup trotted in, two discreet steps ahead of the married producer she was dating. An old flack draped over the bar managed to lift one arm in a wave that she ignored. “I had her!” the scorned man then told the room. “She was nothing special.”
“Did I ever tell you my first marriage ended when my wife caught me having an affair with her best friend?” Michel raised his forlorn Raúl Juliá eyes. Partial to oversized trench coats and thin Italian loafers, he had already confessed his disappointment with the lack of improv theatre and Thai restaurants in Halifax. “The three of us enrolled in a gourmet cooking class. My wife noticed that we were spending too much time shopping for fresh basil.” Scott sensed a je-ne-saisquoi shrug. “It isn’t that hard to find, you know.”
Scott stole a look, trying to see the woman, who, to his surprise, turned out to be Squeaky, the Books editor, the same woman who had wrestled with Smithers in the darkroom and now hated his guts.
“I am not myself today,” Michel moaned, stroking his hair. “My girlfriend has me tired out. She always wants to stay up and talk after sex, while me, I just want to sleep.’’
Michel’s girlfriend was a twenty-two-year-old nymph who sold art supplies. “But I am in love.” She wore bowling shirts and cut her hair like Edith Piaf. “I have decided the woman should always be at least ten years younger than the man; it is more natural that way.’’
A blast of frigid air shocked the room as the door opened. Hmmm. Recognizing the hmmm, Scott shrunk in his seat. Ever since he’d been ordered to profile School Boy, he’d been avoiding MacKenzie, who now cleared his throat and headed for a smoker with a beer. MacKenzie seemed blind to his surroundings, Scott noticed, his vision narrowed to a one-foot corridor. Scott kept his head down where all he could hear was Michel and Squeaky, two sensitive souls afloat in a sea of White Russians.
“Why did you leave the wire?” she asked.
Michel pushed back his hair and, with it, the philistines who had once signed his cheques. “I did not fit their colour scheme. They want to paint everything brown, while me, I see more colour in life.”
“I know what you mean. Some of the morons I work with.”
MacKenzie’s voice was suddenly clear. “Hi, Dick. How’s the lodge?”
“Comin’ along, comin’.” The chain-smoker was wearing vinyl shoes and false teeth that rattled in his mouth. “I had a little problem with them raccoons, but I took care of them.”
“That’s good.”
“They can be buggers if they get into the roof.”
“Terrible nuisance.”
“Not any more!” Dick’s sadistic smile signalled a grisly end for the creatures.
“Doing any hunting?” Garth asked.
“I got my name in for the moose lottery,” said Dick with a conspiratorial wink. “I got pretty good connections, you know.”
Dick had oily skin with pores that looked like they had been created by an HB pencil poked in clay. He had ingrown whiskers that festered and black, subversive brows that filled in as quickly as a dredged channel. Dick’s face was well known in his small town, where he ran a weekly paper with nine employees and a circulation of one thousand, a shoestring operation kept afloat by printing circulars. Reporters used their own cars and cameras, and Dick kept a meticulous log of long-distance calls, ensuring staffers did not exceed their quota.
“I seen Corky Bungay last week.” Dick looked up from his beer.
“Best damn baseball player ever to play on Canadian soil.” Garth sounded like a poll had been taken and Corky had been named the indisputable winner.
Dick kept the editorial operation as simple as his outlook on life. Whenever he received a press release, he pencilled out the date, inserted (STAFF) after the placeline, and sent it to composing. He ran speeches from the local politicians verbatim; he filled pages with social notes and free submissions.
“I seen him when they won the Maritime title.”
“With the Liverpool Larrupers.”
“That’s right, that’s right.” Dick was excited.
“Hell of a team.”
Scott flinched, wondering if MacKenzie would think about the unfinished Where Are They Now?
The mention of Corky seemed comforting to Dick, who was burdened by rumours that his paper was about to be sold. With a grade eight education and no real skills, he was as vulnerable as the raccoons, so Dick, a survivor, had staked his future on a fishing lodge, a ten-cabin spread on a river.
“Corky was in for the knee replacement.”
Michel and Squeaky wobbled to the door, unseen by Garth, who had met Dick thirty years ago at a mine cave-in. While Garth’s politics had evolved since then, Dick’s had congealed in the 1960s, forming a wall against the forces that were, in his mind, oppressing him: women, minorities, and unions. Dick’s loyalties rested with the town’s biggest employer, a pulp mill that sponsored the paper’s softball team. Last year, in a show of allegiance that the mill rewarded with new uniforms, Garth wrote a spirited editorial after the CBC did a story on asthmatics allegedly dying from airborne pollutants.
Seething from the anchor’s snub, the smelly flack, who claimed he had once been a figure skater, was yelling at the bartender: “I had so many women when I was with the Ice Capades that I actually got sick of them.”
“I bet,” said the barkeep, who had trouble reconciling platter lifts with the bloated mess before him.
“You wanna believe it!” The flack wobbled, eyes closed under glasses that skimmed the tip of his nose. “I was the only straight guy in the whole chorus, I was like a kid on Easter morning surrounded by chocolate bunnies.” Scott kept his head down, trying to hear MacKenzie over the flack. “Those little skaters are horny too, with legs like a vise.”
Scott could catch snatches, something about an investigative piece by Cullen, the legislature reporter, the MLA Alex Francis MacDougall, mill money, and safety violations. MacDougall was Dick’s partner in the fishing lodge, it appeared, guaranteeing all of the necessary grants. MacKenzie said Katherine Redgrave had sent Cullen’s story to the Standard’s lawyers, where it was being X-rayed for libel. Garth slid an envelope across the table, past a pile of dead smokes and all moral qualms. “Alex Francis might want to see this so he can head them off at the pass.” At least, Scott decided, it had nothing to do with him.
In a crisis, MacKenzie always went to his greatest strength: moral ambivalence. It presented him with myriad opportunities that would never have arisen for a fussier man.
“I’ll see that Alex Francis gets it.”
“It should help.”
“Don’t worry about nothin’,” Dick assured him. “Them lawyers of yours, they get a lot of government business. One call from Alex Francis and this story will have more holes than a block of Swiss cheese. If I’m not mistaken, one of them partners is hoping to make judge. He ain’t gonna do nothin’ to piss off people in high places.”
An hour later, Garth parked at a brick low-rise with a wheelchair ramp and a sterile entrance. Two nurses were wrestling with a stretcher. Inside, the blue hall smelled like Lysol. Dust formed a shroud over dried flowers that reeked of death. God, Garth hated it here, with TVs blaring and orderlies bustling past dry mouths and vacant stares.
He had every right, he figured, to blindside Cullen and that Redgrave broad, since he knew damn well why Gem was promoting her. It was only because she was so bloody tall. Garth had heard about the interviews in Toronto, how the mucky-mucks had marched the four finalists for city editor into the boardroom like prize steers. “Her!” said Gem’s CEO, dismissing the others on sight. “That way we get our money’s worth. If we are going to promote women, let’s go for get the most bang for the buck.” A features writer, Garth swore, a goddamn sob sister.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
MARY KNOCK IS 87.
WINSTON MACKENZIE IS 82.
A gerontologist walked by, bored by the predictability of it all. Garth hadn’t seen a doctor in five years, even though his ankles were yellow and as springy as a water balloon. Jean went every week, but that was different, since the change had made her so irritable that she couldn’t stand him in the same room.
WINSTON’S ROOM, announced bright block letters. Garth knocked and entered a stale square with pulled shades. He saw a nurse.
TODAY IS MONDAY.
A skeletal man was sitting in a rocker, his stubbly chin wet. He had a blanket on his lap. Without the infrastructure of teeth, his cheeks had collapsed.
“I haven’t seen you since his last birthday,” scolded the nurse.
“No.” Garth cleared his throat. “I’ve been busy.”
The drawers had been labelled since his last visit: CANDY, UNDERWEAR. Garth moved a pair of plaid slippers off the bed and adjusted the man’s blanket, the nurse watching with the proprietorial air of a store owner who had brought out a tray of rings for his inspection.
“How is he?”
“The same,” she said, staying close, as though Garth couldn’t be trusted with his own father. “He’s never any trouble.”