Leper Tango (12 page)

“How have they been treating you?” “All right. No complaints.”

“I guess there's no point in talking about what happened.”

“Not really.”

“I have contacted defence counsel.”

Richard's eyebrows arched slightly.

“I don't see the point. Strikes me as a waste of money.

It's culpable homicide. Way outside the
de minimis
range.

Smithers versus The Queen
. 1977. Self-defence is a non
starter. Provocation is out. It's life, no parole before 25.

Unless section 672 washes.”

“I wouldn't bet my last dollar on 672. It's not automatic anymore.”

Richard stopped, considering this.

“Who's counsel?”

“I don't think you k now this one. I found him through Bourque. He's good, in fact very good, and he's cheap, because he's had some recent troubles with the law society.” “What kind of troubles?”

“He has been under investigation for fronting a sale of si x hundred k ilos of cocaine through a group of Montreal biker gangs.”

“What's his name?”

“Gutman.”

“Gut. Man,” he mouthed disjunctively.

“No. Gutman.”

“That's good. I like that. What do you think he'll plead?”

“I think you can safely rule out reasonable apprehension of bodily harm.”

“Don't suppose drunkenness or any specific intent defence is really an option.”

At that point, I was still a little naïve. Not about everyone. But, I thought Richard might want to discuss things.

“Richard, why did you do it?”

“I'd rather not discuss it.”

“Richard, you can tell me anything. I'm on your side.”

“If you're on my side, you know why I did it.”

“Honestly, Richard, I have no idea. I'd be the first to admit it.”

“I think it's about time you told me why you really came to see me.”

It had been a while. Five years. A lot can happen in five years.

“All right, let's say I know why, but, I need to hear you say why you did it.”

Richard raised the index finger of each hand, and placed them on his temples. Like two Martian antennae.

“It was the aliens.”

“Of course, Richard. But, which aliens?”

“The ones who kidnapped her body. And, who want to poison the water supply of the City. It was purely preemptive. I should get the Order of the British Empire, Franck.” “We're no longer a colony. Okay, fine, Richard, I take it back. 672 might wash. But, forget about the defence for a moment. This is your brother talking. I'm not saying you weren't justified. But, just this once, Richard, I want to know why.”

R icha rd looked a round the four corners of the visitors' room. Smiled knowingly. Like, you idiot brother, how can you not see this. Unless you're working for them. He raised his voice.

“I don't care if this is being recorded! Or who you're working for! Hezbollah agent Candice Robinson, my socalled mother. Mossad agent. Funding suicide bombers.”

Richard smiled sometimes. But, he never laughed.



“So, that's about it, Emily. The Swiss Family Robinson. A collection of social shipwrecks and mutants.”

I sat back, took a deep breath, lit a cigarette. “Any coffee left?”

“That is one incredible story, Franck.”

“Well, you know what they say. You can pick your friends, but not your family.”

“So, tell me, Franck, is anything of this, and I mean any small piddling fact true?”

“I don't know, let me think about that one for a second. Hey, by the way, you really do know what you're doing, don't you?”

“If I were a little less experienced, I'd label you a pathological liar.”

“Really. So, what am I?”

“I think you're trying to get into my pants.”

“I' ll be. Bang on, Emily. That very thought had in fact just crossed my mind. Does that raise any ethical issues from your side?” “Do you know how many of my patients develop this type of fixation?”

“If they don't, there's something really wrong with them. Anyways, why is it a fixation to want to have sex with someone?”

“I'm going to try something a little different next week, Franck.”

The following week, as I drove into the West End of the city towards NRC Consulting, I mulled over what it was that attracted me to Emily. On the street, Emily was nothing much to look at. She was almost nondescript. She had white hair, was well into her fifties. I decided the non-descript component had something to do with it. Emily had succeeded where I had failed, and become completely invisible to the outside world. Also, her smile had seeped down to my internal water table. During the week following our meeting, I felt I had come into contact with the forces of good. Whatever. It was better than the options.

I sat down on a mauve divan in the waiting room, picked up a back issue of
Psychology Today
open on a mahogany coffee table, leafed through it. A man entered the waiting room from the same corridor where Emily had emerged the previous week. The man had the beard and concave forehead of the man on the old John Player's cigarette packages.

“Mr. Robinson?”

During the fleeting seconds he actually met my gaze before spinning into an about-face, his eyes appeared to be jiggling. The man bore a striking resemblance to a former acquaintance. As I followed John Player down the corridor of NRC Consulting, I tried to recall what I could of my friend, the body double of the man I was following. He had telephoned me long distance, reversing the charges, frantically claiming he was being held prisoner in the basement of a Fort Lauderdale scientology centre and had been forced to sign over proceeds from his pension funds. I hung up the phone and never heard from him again.

We entered a room with a capital B glued loosely on the corridor side of the entrance door. The man waved me in ahead of him, closed the door, motioned me to take a seat on an art-deco sofa, about-faced, hunched over and began marching around the room, carrying some
circa
1973 tape recording equipment as if it were a geiger counter. He plugged it into the wall outlet.

“Okay, Franck,” he said by way of preamble, “before I turn this thing on, I want to explore the place in the world where you feel safest.”

We briefly made eye contact for the second time. Another memory of his alter ego. That he had been captain of a tugboat. And that he had lost his job, when he was caught masturbating in the toilet by a woman bailiff sent by the courts to seize some stereo equipment he had forgotten to pay for.

“I don't know. I feel safe in an Audi.”

“I see. An Audi.”

“They handle well. Good for altitude driving. Generally have good sound systems.”

“I see. Anywhere else you feel safe, Franck?” I thought about that for a moment.

“I took an elevator up the Empire State Building once. It was old. But, I felt safe. In good hands. So to speak.”

“So to speak. I see.”

He noted something down in a coiled notepad on his lap. “I think I know what you mean.”

He peered into my face. For a moment, I wondered whether this wasn't in fact my long lost acquaintance. I decided against confronting him.

“There is one place where I both feel in and out of danger simultaneously.”

“I see. Where?”

“Sheba's cunt.”

He made another notation in his notepad, which I noticed was quadrilled. It looked like he had sketched ∑, followed by a V, and a word scribbled, which looked like jungen, or jung.

“It's a little unusual, Franck, but I don't see why we can't take a look at this place which you are calling Sheba's cunt. It's a working hypothesis.”

He recorded another entry. Then, something seemed to strike him as droll, but he put a cap on that.

“How would you, describe this ...
cunt
, Franck, and by describe, I mean what are its salient features as a physical, organic entity?”

Each pronunciation of the word
cunt
caused him to cringe, which was followed by a nervous titter.

“Well, in some ways, she's like any other woman. She has the usual equipment. You know. Labia. Clitoris.”

“No, Franck. I don't know. But you have my full attention.”

“Well, for starters, her clitoris seems to have a brain of its own. I'd swear her cunt is equipped with extrasensory apparati with about a 10,000 kilometre range.”

He held up a flat, jaundiced looking palm towards me. Like a traffic cop.

“Stop. Stop right where you are, Franck.”

He looked excited about something, wiped his pate. “What do you mean by
range
?”

“I mean, close up or far away, she has the capacity to suck the brain cells right out of me.”

I recalled an image which had been recurring in my dreams since her departure.

“You know the student revolution in May '68?”

He did, or at least his nod indicated that he didn't require a complete re-run of penumbral fifth republic France.

“
Rue Gay Lussac
. The overturned cars running up the street from the Luxembourg Gardens.”

“I see.”

I took this as a signal to continue.

“If I were to locate her clitoris, the time frame would be May '68, and the location somewhere around
rue St-

Jacques
. The CRS are six deep, twenty-five across, wear
ing plexi-glass face shields and swinging billy clubs. The hairs of her cunt are back at the Medici palace. Just behind the statue of Bacchus.”

“I see.”

“That is where her cunt starts. It slithers up Claude Bernard. Like a snake. The exact spot where the head of my dick penetrates is around the
Place de l 'Italie
. And her fallopian tubes fork off in two directions. One leads to the tapestry factory at
Manufacture des Gobelins
.”

“I see. And the other?”

“The other curls into a little pocket at the St-Rosaire cemetery on
boulevard Auguste Blanqui
.”

“I see. The anarchist.”

“One and the same.”

“All right, that 's good enough, Franck. I have all I need. Just stay where you are. I will now describe your travels up Sheba's cunt in detail.”

He pushed the mike up to his mouth and entered into a first person travelogue narrative of the itinerary I had just mapped out, speaking in an unguent, new-age murmur.

“I am walking up the cunt of
rue Gay Lus
s
ac
, feeling the walls of Sheba's cunt ...”

From my point of view, he narrated a more than credible reproduction of Sheba's cunt, at one point likening it to a fifty-two bedroom castle with a cliff view over an islet in the Loire river.

“I'm in the vaginal antechamber. I'm looking through a sunlight into the fallopian tube.”

After twenty minutes of this spiel, he pressed down on the Stop button, popped open the cassette and flipped it over to me.

“There. Twice a day, Franck. Or anytime, you're feeling a little stressed.”

He entered a final notation on his notepad, ending with a checkmark and an exclamation point.

“Here is what I think, Franck. You have been confusing this Sheba with the city of Paris. I think that, under the circumstances, you have only one choice. You have to go back and fuck the city of Paris.”

“How do you fuck a city?”

“I don't know. But, your answer lies in there somewhere.”

I looked at him more closely. He began fiddling with his pencil.

“It's you, isn't it, Paul?”

Still staring at his back.

“Who are you talking to, Mr Robinson? My name is Hen ... Hender, Hederickson. Henderson.”

“Paul.”

“I'll be with you in a second, Mr Robinson. Just have to unplug this infernal cassette.”

He stood up, turned around. His features sagged momentarily, then tightened into a grim mask. “I'd rather not talk about it.” “It's you, isn't it?”

“I've put all of that behind me. I've got a good job. Nobody asks me anything, and then you turn up. This is problematic. I've got a good life.”

His voice had slightly picked up in rhythm, taking on a chirpy lilt.

“Take it easy. Your secret is safe. Last I heard, you'd been abducted.”

“Not exactly. It was a Dianetics thing. All right, I was kidnapped. Look, it could happen to anyone. Don't get me wrong. There are some good sides to Scientology. Look at all the celebrities involved: Travolta, Tom Cruise.”

“But, you bailed out.”

He was holding a framed photo in his hand. The photo was of Ron Hubbard, ex-marine, founding charlatan supremo of the Scientologists. There was a signature on it.

“It was a cultural thing. I never got used to Baton Rouge. At least what I saw of it. The centre had rented the local where Lee Harvey Oswald stayed just before the assassination. I had to distribute flyers to people.

They'd just disappear, get sent off to other centres. Eventually, my family sent in a deprogrammer. Patrick, I think the guy's name was. I guess you could say I was only reborn once I left the movement. Reborn as a psychologist. But, let's get back to you.”

I recalled a moment back in the city, sitting in a café on the
rue Montorgueil
, on a stool beside a young, bespectacled Englishman, alone, drunk despite the early morning hour, spilling his guts out to a waitress who ignored him while he flipped her twenty franc tips. He had been babbling, “Just let me take you out for a drink.

I cannot bear to live without you.” The heavily caked makeup of the tart freezing into a sneer as she poured out another
démi-pression
, slid it contemptuously across the counter at double the regular tarif, then retreated to the opposite end of the bar to dream, not about beauty, or the ephemeral nature of life, or the Louvre or the sun king, but how she could skin another mark to pay for her daily coiffure.