Reunion

“Maggie?” the girl asks, as she passes me on the street.

“Yes?” I hesitate and glance around nervously. At first, I dreaded reporters wanting to interview the rumoured subject of Archibald’s book. But in the three months that have elapsed since it hit the stores, things have been pretty quiet. Perhaps the outside world accepts the story as fiction. And it probably doesn’t hurt that my number is unlisted. Archibald, for once, has had the sense to leave me alone.

“It’s me … Amelia.”

“Amelia?” I peer at her. I do not recognize the slim, young woman with red-streaked hair in expensive, form-hugging jeans and a leather coat the colour of butter.

“Michael’s daughter?” she prods. “Amelia Bancroft.”

“Oh, hi,” I say uncomfortably. I haven’t seen her since our strange New Year’s Eve in Michael’s apartment, still an unsettling memory. But the novel, and all of its unsavoury contents, is reason enough to avoid her. I have not wanted to think about Michael since. I begin to make my excuses.

“I get that you are incognito but … could you make an exception? My dad, you know, he didn’t take things so well … about the book. And I could really use someone to talk to. You don’t know what it’s like … being his daughter.”

“Well … I am actually kind of in a hurry.” I am meeting Sam and Dan. But, then again, it isn’t an emergency. She looks at me pleadingly, eyes liquid blue magnets. Like father, like daughter, I think. “A quick coffee, then.”

“So, it’s you in the book, obviously,” she begins, fiddling around in her oversized knapsack and pulling out a wad of chewing gum.

“How have you been?” I ask, sipping my coffee.

“Not bad. Not good. I finished school; I’m considering Cambridge, actually.”

“Cambridge, that’s fantastic!” I say.

“Whatever. I’m just here visiting Pops. And he is more than a little pissed. I heard him on the phone to his lawyer. He’s hiding in a hotel actually. Won’t even go home. Paranoid.”

“Yeah, well, Archibald really threw him under the bus. That’s if people really think it’s him, your dad, I mean, which it can’t be, of course.”

She presses forward. “So, it must have been a shock … seeing yourself, your life, just splattered around like that.”

“Yeah, just a little.” I sigh, allowing myself to wallow.

“Being used like that must have bit.” She twitches and fiddles around in her bag again. I wonder if she has a cocaine problem.

“What I read was not exactly flattering … but I am pretty sure I’ll get past it.”

“I always had you pegged for an optimist but ‘get past it’?” she adds doubtfully. “He dissected you like a fetal pig in a lab experiment.”

I squirm at the image. “I’m perfectly fine. Fetal-pig imagery aside. I am sure I will be completely over it,” I add, “by the time I’m eighty.”

I lean into the warm, soapy water, bubbles closing in around my neck, and sigh. The old claw-foot tub is still the best attribute of the Pink Palace, aside from the fact it’s an Archibald-free zone. I was still unnerved by my exchange with Amelia the day before. She had been pleasant and sympathetic and so interested in my welfare. I had found myself talking, even opening up. I had felt like an indulgent aunt. Could I become friends with Michael’s daughter after everything?

Sam shifts in his end of the tub. He is reading a biography of Plato, or at least trying to. I flick some bubbles at him with my foot. He blows them off and pushes my foot from its perch on the edge of the tub causing it to land in the water with a splat-splunk, which covers his book with foamy spray. He attempts to shake the book out and then gives up and drops it to the floor.

“You are a troublemaker, Maggie Underwood,” he says, searching out my foot in the watery depths and grabbing it. I squirm. “And you know what happens to troublemakers, don’t you?”

“I can’t wait to find out,” I say, a willing captive. He has a hold of my knees and is slowly dragging me under. He lowers himself on top of me, during which at least half of the bath water sloshes out onto the floor.

“Whoops,” he says as he looks at the small lake around us.

I peer over the edge. “It’ll dry,” I say, and pull him down into the water.

We are eating popcorn on his couch, which he gladly brought with him when he moved in. I have to admit it is far more comfortable than my old girl. I surf through the channels, looking for a little mindless TV. I flip past Archibald’s face and flip back.

The interviewer sits in an armchair across from him. I recognize her as Judy List, the host who interviewed Michael a couple of years before. She has changed her glasses and her hair, but she has the same tin-can smile.

“It’s a delight to have you here, Mr. Weeks.”

“The delight is all mine. Please call me Archibald.”

“Archibald, then,” she oozes.

He smiles, the twinkly-eyed old eccentric.

“Your book, Archibald, is extraordinary. Congratulations on receiving the prestigious Harry Osfield Wood BC Book Award.”

“It is quite an honour.” My stomach sags. I had hoped it had been forgotten, buried.

“Your novel is an involving tale filled with love, intrigue, betrayal, and, of course, scandal. And what a wonderful motley crew of characters you created.”

“Motley, indeed,” he says affably, taking a dainty sip from a mug.

“Your poor, sweet protagonist, let’s start there. I think we all identified with at least some of her missteps.” The cameras cut to an audience of women of various ages nodding. “She is so … realistic and conflicted. How did you write such a convincing young woman?” I put the popcorn bowl down with a clank. Sam tries to rip the remote from my hand. But I keep it in an iron grip, riveted to the old man on the tube.

“Well, the world is just full of young people to draw from. And I am still a young person at heart in many ways. I have always identified with the young feminist’s plight.” The audience murmurs appreciatively.

“Still his appalling old self,” Sam says grimly.

“Bugger,” I agree.

“Uh-huh.” Judy blinks dumbly, returning to her cue cards. “And James, what a sinister, and, yet, touching portrayal of a villain. And how can we forget Edward, the fun-loving, sage old writer?” She inhales, tilting her head back and revealing cavernous nostrils. “All of your characters are so … believable. But, I am curious, how do you respond to the article in Vancouver Today that says they are based on actual people?”

I look at Sam, stomach convulsing. “Vancouver Today?”

“It’s a local magazine,” he answers. We turn back to the show, waiting for the worst.

Archibald smiles calmly, prepared. “I think referring to a novel as authentic is one of the greatest compliments that one can bestow on a work of fiction. As W.H. Auden said, ‘A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.’”

“So, then, you maintain that your characters are not based in reality?”

“My lawyers have instructed me not to answer any further questions on the subject.” But he can’t resist and she is experienced enough to wait. “Based? Possibly. Carbon copies? Not remotely.”

“So, Zoë is not based on your own real-life granddaughter who worked, up until very recently, as your assistant?”

“I do have a granddaughter who is a similar age to Zoë. That is a fact.”

“And James is not based on the bestselling author Michael Bancroft, whom you claimed to have had a liaison with in the early part of his career?” I spit out a kernel of popcorn.

“Again, no comment. Ancient history.” He is still not ruffled; in fact, he is loving this. I sit on the remote to prevent Sam from reaching it.

“We were unable to reach your granddaughter for comment. But how do you respond to the claim made by Amelia Bancroft in her article in Vancouver Today that she claims not to have even finished reading the book?”

Was she talking about Michael’s daughter, Amelia?

“She has never been particularly learned. I hope that she will read it, though. I see it as a kind of manual for the guileless.”

I feel my head pulsing.

“Furthermore, is it true that your granddaughter quit your employ after discovering that you documented her, as yet, unsubstantiated affair with Michael Bancroft, or James as he is called in the book?” Wow. Old Judy was working the cue cards. She’d done her homework, apparently with the help of Amelia.

“Actually, I had to let her go, poor girl. Her skill set was somewhat challenged.”

“What a lying rat!” I scream.

“Isn’t it true that she is a local artist? A painter?” Judy prods.

Archibald smiles tightly. “Yes. I give credit where credit is due. She does have talent with the paintbrush, at least.” I throw popcorn all over the room.

“One last thing, how do you respond to rumours that Michael Bancroft is planning to file a defamation law suit naming you and your publication?” Wow, she was really going for the jugular. The audience sat in a hushed silence. Was Michael really suing Archibald?

“I have not had any communication with Michael Bancroft, period. He is free to contact my lawyers at any time.”

“When we return, we will discuss the multigenerational love triangle, in which grandfather and granddaughter unknowingly share a lover, culminating in the granddaughter’s depraved spiral into prostitution and eventual death.”

Sam wrestles the controller from under the cushion, spilling me onto the floor and clicking off the TV.

“Did she just say prostitution and death?” I ask from my dazed position on the floor.

“You really didn’t finish the book, did you?”

I shake my head, mute.

“Well, maybe, that’s for the best.”

“And Amelia — I thought we were just having coffee.”

“You had coffee? With Michael’s daughter? Recently?”

“Yes, remember? I told you. But she didn’t mention anything about an article. So wouldn’t that make anything I said ‘off the record’?”

“Well, I guess she took ‘off the record’ as ‘on the record.’”

After I have recovered from the knowledge that I am a sex trade worker in Archibald’s universe and decided not to search out the article so cryptically referred to in the interview, we unplug the TV and the phone and lie out on the balcony, sharing a lounge chair. The night is dark and cool, the stars scattered. Sam points out planets and stars, and the horror of being talk show fodder starts to recede. The sensation of our arms pressed together, my head against his shoulder, is a salve that no doctor could prescribe. The world has given me Sam, so how could it be that bad?

“Maggie. You know your idea? That idea you had? About Archibald?”

“Yes?” We had put it on hold, waiting for an opportunity, then lost steam.

“I think I know how to make it happen.”

It begins with a phone call.

“Eddie Green,” comes his voice over the phone.

“Hi, Eddie? This is Maggie — Maggie Underwood…”

“Maggie. Hi! How are you?”

“Not bad. Everything considered…”

“Yes, well. It’s unfortunate about you and Archibald. But the book has been really well-received, and your paintings moved remarkably well. Just think, the next time you want a showing it will be that much easier.” Still trying to alleviate his guilt, I think.

“I didn’t call to talk about the book,” I interrupt.

“What can I do for you?”

“I would really like to let bygones be bygones, you know. Get on with my life. He is my grandfather and I would really like to put an end to … the bad feelings.”

He pauses and I hear him mentally calculating the effect of me and Archibald making up on his career and on the book. “Archibald would love that, I am sure. But why are you calling me and not him? I’m sure he would talk to you.”

“Yes, well, I was hoping you could help me orchestrate a reunion. A public get-together. He was so helpful to my career as an artist; as you already mentioned, he really ‘launched’ me.”

He laughs nervously into the phone.

“I would like to present him with a gift. A new portrait just for him at the BC Wood award ceremony.”

“Well, um, it’s next week. I don’t know. That might take a bit of arranging.”

“I think it would really be worth it. It might help for him to have one of his ‘characters’ on his side … Think of all the good publicity. And he did call me a talented artist on local television.” Sam gives me a thumbs up from his position on the other line.

“Yes. Well, I will have to run it by Penelope, of course.”

“Of course.”

“And I am assuming she will want to preapprove the portrait.”

“Absolutely,” I say. “Have her call me. Also, could you remind her how much Archie loves a surprise?”

Penelope is waiting for me outside the studio wearing a short pinstriped skirt and business jacket and a man’s tie. Her black hair is arranged in trendy spikes. She air-kisses me.

“Maggie. You look fabulous,” she gushes. I can tell she is excited. “I was pleased when Eddie called. Although I don’t know why you didn’t contact me directly. He has nothing to do with these sorts of things.”

“I didn’t want to bother you.” I smile sweetly and unlock the studio. Keep your cool, I say to myself, resisting the urge to belt her collagen-filled mouth with my fist. “And he is my grandfather, you know. I just want to make things right.” I deliver my lines as convincingly as I can.

I pull up the blinds in my tiny studio and turn the picture to face her. In it, Archibald sits serenely on a cushion, looking meditative, a small golden Buddha in the foreground, a white scarf cascading over his shoulder, eggshell curtains billowing in a breeze.

“Very nice. I like the Asian theme. Yes, this is quite flattering. He will like this. So, I will contact you with the details of your presentation.”

“Should I discuss it with Archibald?”

“You know, why don’t we keep it as a surprise until the day of the event? You give him the picture. Kiss and make up. With the right press, who knows what this will do for your career? A few interviews to say how much you loved the book: at first you were a little surprised, but now you are quite flattered if it was actually you who inspired him and so on.” Sam was right. The appeal to her vanity worked perfectly. In her forecast, she would come off as the organizer and take all the credit. Archibald was the only one who could have sniffed me out.

“If you think so. You do this for a living after all.” I smile deferentially.

A loud banging comes from the living room, knuckles being applied with force to the front door. Sam and I are caught up in a game of Scrabble. Well, actually, I am lying across the Scrabble board, and he is leaning over me unbuttoning my shirt.

“It couldn’t be the tenants below,” he says indifferently. “It must be the Chinese food.” I roll out from underneath him.

“Already? That was fast.”

In the living room, I search for my purse and pull out my wallet. The banging sounds again. The delivery man didn’t usually have such attitude.

“Hang on.” I unlatch the door expecting to find Kim holding bags steaming with cashew chicken and won ton soup, and, instead, I find Michael, eyes smeared and blood-rare, standing in the doorway.

“Michael.” I automatically take a step back. “What are you doing here? I thought you were out of town.”

He clutches Archibald’s book in his hands.

“This monstrosity. How could you?” He stumbles at me. He smells like he has been marinating in a barrel of whisky.

“How could I what?” I retort. “I think you mean how could he?”

“I trusted you!” His eyes bulge, spit sprays from his mouth.

“I didn’t tell him a thing. You know that. He used a private detective.”

“I don’t believe it.” But I see on his face he does. The truth sinks in.

“I met him. Zoltan something or other. Now, I think you should be going.”

“What a disaster.” His face is grey; the shock has aged him. Or has he always been this old?

“And what about Amelia?” I ask. “Apparently, she wrote some article about Archibald.”

“I do not want to talk about her.”

“How many people will actually believe it anyway? The stuff he wrote about you and him, that was an obvious lie. You are nothing if not heterosexual.”

He looks up at me then, and what I see on his face tells a different story. “I mean, you and Archibald were never lovers, were you?”

“Of course not,” he says, looking down.

“Is there a problem?” Sam appears in the hallway, hands on his hips, doing his best Clint Eastwood impersonation. Now it is Michael’s turn to gape.

“The janitor strikes again,” he declares contemptuously.

Sam takes a step forward. “I think it’s time for you to hit the road.” His lip curls in the beginning of a sneer.

“We’re in the middle of a conversation. Look, I’m in a really bad mood,” Michael says in lieu of an apology.

“So I heard.” Sam doesn’t budge.

“Michael, this isn’t a good time. You need to go home.” I put a hand on his shoulder to end the standoff.

“What? Does he live with you now?” He shakes me off, glancing from me to Sam. “You certainly don’t let the paint dry.” Sam takes a step forward as Michael lets out a crazed yell and rushes towards him, fists up. Sam steps out of the way easily, and Michael collides with my hallway table. He hits it with such force that it snaps beneath him, and he topples to the floor with a thunderous crash. “Christ!” he screams, holding a snapped-off wooden leg.

“Lovely,” I say. “That’s just great. Feel free to redecorate.”

From a heap on the floor, he mutters: “It’s been a bad day. Hell, it’s been a bad year.”

I hurry out onto the street. Michael had not been in good shape. After recovering for a few minutes on our couch and muttering incoherently, he had left as abruptly as he had arrived. I told Sam I needed to make sure he didn’t pass out on the sidewalk. But, in reality, I had an ulterior motive.

I glance into a car as I cross the street. It is an unfamiliar black town car. Michael is slumped against the steering wheel, door slightly ajar. He is either sleeping or frozen in thought, ruminating on the disaster of the night or his life in general. I rap on the window. He jolts upright and blinks. Now would be the time to get the truth. But did I want the truth?

I open the passenger door and get in. I look over at him. He is a mess. His eyes are puffy, his hair smeared, his shirt unbuttoned at the neck; there is a welt on the side of his head from where he struck the floor.

“I’m sorry I got so violent with your boyfriend.”

“It was more with my hallway table than with Sam.”

“I never liked him.”

“I would say it’s mutual. And the table hates you.”

“I never thought he would go so far. I thought he had a little more restraint. Lecherous old sack of shit.” He slumps against his headrest.

“Yeah, I guess the sky’s the limit for Archibald. Anyone’s dirty laundry is fair game, including his own. Judy said on her show that you might sue him.”

“I know. She called me, and I told her as much. I confronted him today. I told him I would sue for libel. And he laughed. The demon laughed in my face as though he was being tickled with a goddamn feather. I wanted to strangle him.” He reaches out his hand and clutches at the air. Archibald would love the pathos he had stirred up — Michael drowning in self-pity and rage.

“Could you sue? That would teach him a lesson.”

He shakes his head forlornly, shoulders slumped, defeated. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“It’s true, isn’t it?”

His eyes are on me. “It was so long ago.”

“But you were lovers.” My voice is flat. The words come more easily than I expected. “Tell me.”

“Yes … we were involved.” He clears his throat.

I should have been shocked, but sitting in the car calmly discussing his past sexual tryst with my grandfather seemed almost normal. “What a fucked-up world,” I say. I long for a joint or an escape chute, anything to get away from this. Michael wasn’t just a ladies’ man.

“You have to understand … I was a young, aspiring writer and Archibald was … established. He took me in and showed me the ropes…”

“Among other things.” I couldn’t resist. “Was it a fling or…?”

“It was for me. I mean, it lasted a few months or so. Everyone experiments, right? Or at least they did back then.”

“Not everyone.”

“It was the seventies. The early seventies. Anyway, he helped me out, gave me pointers on my first book, and then I broke it off.”

“After it was published?” I ask dryly.

“That’s what he thought, that I had used him, and maybe I did. He got ugly … I tried to give him money to shut him up. He refused to take it, and I guess I probably didn’t handle it the best. I thought he would let it go. We didn’t see each other for years until he bought the apartment beneath me. But, even then, I never saw him much.”

“And you never thought to tell me this? That you were my grandfather’s boy toy?” I swallow back growing nausea.

“I had no idea who you were. When you told me, it was already too late. You have to believe me.”

“And when I told you who I was, you still didn’t—”

“What should I have done? Spilled my guts? Told you the whole sordid story? Yes, that would have been a good move. It would have turned you off and ... would you have wanted to know?”

I sit silently, considering.

“The answer is ‘no.’ I can tell you that.”

I can’t argue with him. Not really.

“I already cared about you. And he was ancient history. I never, never thought he would put it in a book.”

“That makes two of us,” I say, exhaling into the darkness of the car. “How old are you?” I ask. It has occurred to me that he must be way past his forties.

“What difference does that make?”

“What, fifty? Not sixty?”

“I am fifty-six,” he says huffily.

He was two years older than my father!

“I have young genes.” He shrugs. “Anyway, what difference does that make? Everything has turned to shit. My fan club shut down last week. Turns out it’s run by some gay-bashing right-wing nut jobs. My book deal has been put on a back burner so they can ‘prioritize.’ That’s what they said, ‘prioritize,’ like I was a bloody condiment in a grocery list. Christ!”

“I’m sure it will all come together,” I comfort him. Archibald had hit him where it hurt most, in the pocketbook. But he would figure out the angle and eventually turn it into profit. He was a businessman at heart. “This is the nineties. Who knows, it might actually be trendy to be bisexual one day.”

“Not for me. My readership is mostly women and heterosexual men.”

“Well, I guess you’ll expand into a new demographic?” And then I had an insight. “You’re why Archibald hates bisexuals so much!”

I press on unfazed. “What about Amelia?”

“Have you read it?” He reaches across me, opens his dashboard, and hands me a crumpled magazine. “Be my guest. You want to talk about betrayal, well, get in line.”

I find the article: “Crazy World: Not a Bedtime Story Is Stranger than Fiction by Amelia Bancroft.”

I sigh and skim the article. It begins with me, in a coffee shop.

“Maggie sighs plaintively,” she wrote, “clearly sleep deprived and depressed. She admits to her victimization, the bad luck of being caught in the quagmire of the bad blood between the two aging writers. Her affair with Michael Bancroft, long over, is one she recalls with regret. Terminating her employment with Archibald Weeks, after his latest offering revealed a version of herself that was too close for comfort, was necessary but traumatic. ‘I only read a few chapters, but it was like being ambushed in a dark alley and repeatedly drop-kicked,’ Maggie laments. ‘I might recover by the time I’m eighty.’”

“Shit. She must have been recording me,” I say. “She turned up out of nowhere, looking so lonely, batting her — your — eyes at me. I had no idea she was writing an article. I thought she needed someone to talk to. How could I be so dumb?”

“You were ensnared, I’m sure. You don’t come off that bad anyway, maybe a little dippy. It’s all aimed at me. I’m the villain. Me!” He whacks the window. “What have I done to deserve a daughter like this?”

He yanks the pages from my hands, opens the door, and tosses them outside. “She describes me as a deadbeat dad, a womanizing manwhore.”

Well, if the shoe fits, I think.

“She then describes every detail of my ‘affair’ with Archibald. She’s exposed me to the censure of the world ... I’m utterly indefensible.”

“Well, what can you do now?” I ask with a degree of sympathy. He seems so beaten down and vulnerable.

“I don’t know. She’s all but disappeared. I can’t cut off her trust fund; she’s emptied out her accounts, and her mother hasn’t spoken to me for months. She knows I’d never sue her for slander; that would look even worse. A father suing his daughter to get — what? His own money back?” He bangs his head repeatedly against the steering wheel and then keeps it there, hunched over.

“Michael, I always wondered, why me? You could have had any woman you wanted.”

He sits up and for a moment his eyes are clear. “You reminded me of who I was before the books, the money. Before him. Isn’t it ironic? You reminded me of someone I had lost.”

“That’s funny. For a time, you made me want to be someone else.”

“Then I am sorry. I loved you in a way that was just for you. It may not mean a lot now. But it’s true.” He reaches over and takes my hands and smiles. It is a broken version of the smile from all those times before.

I smile back at the strangeness of it all. It didn’t matter, none of it mattered. I had gone to the school of Michael, and I had graduated — moved on. But he would always have a place in my heart.

“What will you do?” I ask, letting go of his hands.

“Who knows? I’m screwed.” He sighs.

“True. But you will get over it. You’ll see.”

“And you? Will you get over it?”

This time I am way ahead of him: “I couldn’t be related to Archibald if I wasn’t a survivor.”

The reception for Archibald’s award is being held in the Pacific Wood Museum — a large, modern building with a high, dome-shaped ceiling constructed out of skylights. Sam and I arrive in Dan’s jeep; he’s agreed to drop us off and wait outside, like a getaway driver, in case we need to make a quick escape. The streets are already lined with posh cars. We enter through a side door as Penelope has instructed and are shown through a long corridor by a serious-looking, middle-aged man. I have tucked the original painting inside my portfolio case. It gives Archibald a debonair air, a Truman Capote quality. He would have loved it. The second portrait, the one that only Sam and I have seen, is wrapped in black velvet and concealed beside it. Sam carries the case carefully as we are shown to the green room.

“Oh, there you are,” sings Penelope. She is dressed in haute couture, which in this case involves a fluffy metallic peach dress, cinched with an enormous belt, and fishnets that flash her toned legs. It is very Cyndi Lauper circa 1985.

“Here we are,” I say with what I hope is a pleasant smile.

“I will just take this and set it up,” she says.

“Actually, Sam will handle the painting. I have put so much work into it. I’m a little bit superstitious.” I flash my eyebrows like an eccentric artist. This is the moment of truth; if she insists on setting it up herself, it will be much harder to pull off the switch.

“Oh. Okay,” she says in a trying-not-to-be-disappointed voice. “Follow me.” Sam unzips the portfolio case. Will she ask to see it now? I wonder, holding my breath. Just then, a man holding a clipboard approaches her. They whisper in an animated fashion.

“Absolutely no more martinis for him. Of course that includes schnapps!” I can only assume she’s referring to Archibald. “Water only. Test it first. He had a flask in his pocket. Wait…” She rushes after the assistant in full-blown crisis mode. Sam takes the opportunity to place the painting on the easel and cover it in velvet.

I hear applause as a mannish woman with a headset approaches.

Penelope reappears at my elbow: “It’s packed out there. What with all the awards and the press. Of course, Archibald is the main attraction. Nervous?” Apparently, Archibald’s book sales had been so impressive there had been a renewed interest in all of his work. He had, in fact, become a local celebrity for real, not just in his imagination.

“Not until you asked,” I say, feeling phantom butterflies swimming in my stomach. I look over at Sam, and the expression in his eyes steadies me. Even Archibald had written that I could put up a fight when I thought it worth my while.

“So, when you are introduced, you go on like we said. Say a few words and present the painting. Keep it short, though. We are running long. Sam will have to watch from backstage.” She flicks her eyes to him dismissively.

The woman with the headset motions to me. Sam squeezes my arm and whispers, “Go get him, tiger. I’ll be here waiting, no matter what.”

“Okay,” Penelope says, escorting me to the stage.

“Ladies and gentlemen, if I can have your attention one more time,” says the MC, an attractive forty-something woman I recognize as a local news anchor. Archibald sits behind her with three other award recipients. He leans on his cane and turns in my direction, basking in the limelight, stylish in a tux and a violet scarf. I notice the audience for the first time, rows and rows of familiar and unfamiliar faces.

“It is my pleasure to introduce Maggie Underwood, Archibald Weeks’s granddaughter. I am told that Maggie, a local artist, has a special presentation to make in Mr. Weeks’s honour,” the MC announces.

I glance behind me to confirm that the easel has been placed on the stage, still concealed in velvet, and make my way to the podium.

“Good evening,” I say in my most professional voice, leaning into the microphone, trying not to look at the faces that fill the cavernous auditorium. “I was compelled to come here tonight when I heard that Archibald was being honoured for his controversial work, Not a Bedtime Story. And it is quite a piece of work, isn’t it?” I swallow. “I wanted to give him something personal. Something that not only reflected how I see him, but that also conveyed what it feels like to be in my position, to be fully exposed, as his granddaughter. Archibald, this is my tribute to you. I call it Archibald, Full Frontal.”

I take a step back towards the easel and pull the black cover away in a single motion. There in full view is Archibald at his most unflattering. I have painted him emerging from shadows as he steps from the bath, bare skin a sickly greyish-white. His shoulders are hunched, his breasts rest on rolls of sagging stomach flesh, which hangs so low it partly, but not completely, conceals his shrivelled prune-sized genitals. His legs are two scrawny baseball bats beneath his wide midsection. He scowls out at the world, his eyes hollowed and sunken, with an expression of contempt on his face. I have rendered him as naked as he had rendered me. But he is not alone: the bathroom walls behind him are wallpapered with the severed heads of all the “friends” he betrayed in the novel and in life: Sam, Michael, the Deliahs, Rita, my mother, my grandmother, and me. Our eyes bulge like glazed olives, and our mouths hang open, revealing blackened tongues. In his hand, he holds a curved machete, from which bright cherry-coloured blood drips and pools around his feet. It is my most disturbing, and quite possibly my best, work. The portrait’s reveal is accompanied by a series of gasps, followed by a prolonged silence as people digest the garish image. Then the murmuring begins, growing more vociferous as it echoes through the room. Archibald, for his part, is still sitting, a frozen statue, face growing redder, until he finally lets out a raspy, explosive cough.

“Get him a glass of water,” a matronly woman seated beside him, another award recipient, urges. “I think he’s choking on an olive!” Would he fake his death in order to divert attention from the painting?

“Is this a joke?” the MC asks me, covering the microphone. “What should I do?”

Just then, Penelope swooshes onto the stage in crazed damage-control mode, like a beetle that has just had its brains bashed in. Instead of running to assist Archibald, she scoops the cover off the floor and attempts to throw it over the painting. As she passes me, I can’t resist sticking my foot out and tripping her. She stumbles madly in her heels, free arm flailing, screeching: “EEEEEEEK!” until she abruptly tips over, skirt and its crinoline layers swirling over her head like a puff pastry, and collapses in a crumpled heap. The velvet cover meanwhile has taken flight, like a magic carpet, and cascades to its final resting place in front of Archibald.

The MC, who is rushing to the still-coughing Archibald to deliver a glass of water, gets her foot caught in the velvet and skids, landing squarely in the lap of a middle-aged man seated on the other side of Archibald. The water sloshes from the glass, bathing the man, Archibald, and the MC. From my vantage spot, I can see the man underneath the MC take the opportunity to give her shapely ass a pronounced squeeze. She jumps up, takes a step back, and grinds her spike heel into his foot, all the while displaying a plastic smile for the audience’s benefit.

“Ahh!” screams the man.

“Try that again and see what I do!” she says out of the corner of her mouth. He bends over his maimed toes, moaning.

Archibald continues to cough, turning an alarming shade of puce. I watch, fascinated, as the dominoes continue to fall. The woman beside Archibald pounds him on the back. He lets out a whooping noise and spits a tiny green object out of his mouth with such force it flies into the audience.

Meanwhile, Penelope is still trying to free herself from the layers of her skirt. “What a clusterfuck!” she brays, rolling onto her knees. She tries to pull herself up by grabbing hold of the easel. “Help me, someone!” She makes it halfway up, and then the easel collapses with a crash, and the painting of Archibald slides off and lands face up on the stage. Penelope is back on her back, swearing up a storm.

The stagehand appears, talking into her headset, and attempts to help Penelope, now wrestling with the easel, off the stage floor. As she shoves him away, he shrugs. It seems she hasn’t made many friends among the staff.

The crowd’s noise intensifies. I hear laughter and shocked exclamations. “I think this wraps up the evening’s presentation,” the MC announces belatedly, once again at the podium. “Please enjoy the rest of your evening.” People begin jostling and pushing, some exiting the auditorium and others pressing towards the stage for a closer look.

A series of camera flashes blinds me momentarily as members of the press reach the bottom of the podium. Someone bends over the painting and takes a photo and then offers a furious Penelope a hand. Three security guards appear, calling nonsensical things into their walkie-talkies. I come back to reality and attempt to make my escape. Just as I reach the wings, I hear a familiar voice yell out, “Bravo! Bravo. Well done, my girl. Now this is what I call a party!” I turn to see Archibald being carried off, still in his chair, with a martini glass in his hand, held in a salute. Like the oldest prom king alive, he raises his glass higher, toasting the room, the people, the world at large, and as he does, he cackles like a man having the time of his life.

Penelope, now standing, is attempting to re-shoe herself. I have made it into the wings out of view but can’t help watching. “Where is she? That fucking cunt!” she yells shrilly. Eddie has materialized and is talking to the MC, nodding his head. The man with the maimed foot is hobbling and shaking his fist at a photographer. A stranger takes my arm and attempts to pull me back on stage. “Can we get a picture, miss?”

And then, Sam is beside me, as if on cue, holding my hand, and leading me out through a nearby door.

Out the side of the building, I exhale for what feels like the first time in minutes. I feel him panting against me. He kisses me, and it is like I am waking up from a nightmare.

“Let’s get out of here!” I urge. We rush for the jeep, and Dan pulls out into a street that is already filling with people and cars.

“That was not quite what I expected,” I say.

“It never is,” Sam says. “He never is. You were so brave.”

“I was scared shitless,” I admit, feeling a strange and thrilling sensation.

“Me too.” He touches my cheek. “But you were brilliant. You should have seen her.” Sam relates the events to Dan. In his version, I am David standing up to Goliath.

Dan says, “Poetic justice at last.”

“I don’t know about that, but it feels like closure,” I say, as Dan manoeuvres us away from the auditorium. As a plan, it had been full of flaws, but it had succeeded better than I had even imagined, hadn’t it? I look down at my hands and see they are shaking.

“It was a night he’ll never forget,” Sam adds.

But afterwards, I thought it was more like I had crashed a party that wasn’t mine. In doing so, I had confronted chaos — had stared it in the face and walked away — but even as I escaped, I felt like it had recognized me. I had brought myself to its attention and now it was watching. I could change my name and number, but it would still know how to find me. And Archibald? He had surprised me. He had laughed as he was carried away, laughed not like a victim, but like a participant in the wild turn of events.

It was as if he knew a truth I did not, could not, know. I heard his voice in my head: “Maggie, chaos claims us all in the end.”