Caught (20 page)

Who’s that guy Roy Brophy?

He came in last minute.

Who is he?

Worry about your part of it, okay?

Where did he come from?

Old money.

Nobody said some guy I never heard of comes in at the last minute. Nobody said Carter.

Carter has a hundred grand on the boat to purchase the cargo.

Fresh from the loony bin.

You have to trust me. You don’t know what’s been going on out here.

You got that bloody well right.

You want to have this out?

But Slaney didn’t want to have anything out. He wanted to believe.

I have to ask. Okay? Be straight with me.

Absolutely, Hearn said.

The contact in Colombia, Slaney said.

Colonel Angelo Lopez, Hearn said. He’s a good guy.

Does Lopez know about the last trip? Slaney asked. That we owe?

Not a chance, Hearn said.

Because if that’s the scene, I’m out of here, Slaney said.

Things have changed down there, Doug, that’s what I’m telling you. They’ve never heard of us down there.

I want to know what I’m walking into.

Those people we dealt with four years ago are long gone. New management. Those old guys moved on.

I don’t know, man.

You want out, Slane? You want out? You can walk. One of the
Playboy
centrefolds looked down at Slaney over Hearn’s shoulder. The lava lamp gurgled and a fierce scarlet blob waggled up through the murky glass missile and when it reached the top it broke into a hundred balls and sank and reformed. A platinum blonde behind Hearn was laid out on a poolside, touching herself with long pink fingernails. Her mouth was a soft O. Astonished and mock innocent.

Wish I felt better.

Come on, man. Let’s get a drink.

In the middle
of the evening there was an argument between them about Hearn’s keys. There was music and girls and beer and they’d had a disagreement.

Hearn couldn’t find his keys and he was certain Slaney must have taken them. They’d gone out together for more liquor and when they came back he’d lost the keys.

You came in, Slaney said.

I came in and I had the keys. They were yelling because of the music. Hearn was using the soused logic of: if I don’t have them, you must have them. And also: I gave them to you, I have a distinct memory.

Some girl jammed herself between them to get to the fridge. She was pressed against Hearn, writhing through, and he raised his arms in the air like it was a stick-up and gave a lascivious smirk and she knocked Slaney out of the way with her hip.

Did they fall out in the porch?

They’re not in the porch.

On the lawn maybe?

They’re not on the lawn.

You came in.

And I handed you the keys.

And you put the keys down next to the bag of booze.

I had the keys and I said, Here, put them in your pocket.

You put the bag down.

I put the bag down and I said, Here.

Let me ask you something, what would I want with your keys?

They all drank well into the morning. There were mushrooms, acid, pot, beer, and hard liquor of every sort. Slaney did not partake of the acid.

You’re abstaining? Hearn yelled.

Big day tomorrow, right, Slaney said. He had a beer stein full of an emerald drink.

Straight and narrow, I get your story, Hearn yelled. Slaney watched him put a tab of acid on his tongue. A teensy square of paper with a happy face printed on it. He darted his tongue in and out like a snake.

You have to drive me to the airport in a few hours, Slaney said. Hearn swallowed and screwed one eye shut and shivered all over.

What do you think of the place? Hearn asked him. My girlfriend did all the decor. Those lampshades. They’re antiques.

Where is she? Slaney asked.

In there, talking to Brophy. Slaney saw the contractor standing in the corner of the living room next to a potted banana tree and a girl in a rhinestone-studded halter top, a pair of bell-bottoms. She had her hand pressed flat against Brophy’s chest, as if to keep him from getting away. She had a bottle of vodka by the neck and she waved it in the air.

What did I say, Hearn asked.

Knockers.

I said ass.

Ass, yes. But also knockers.

Go talk to her.

I will.

Listen to her, man; she’s beautiful. Really smart.

I see that.

Got any smokes? Hearn said.

I don’t smoke, Slaney said.

Me neither. Thought I’d try one.

Slaney thought of the two cigarettes tied up with ribbon the old lady in Montreal had given him. One of her cats sitting on the kitchen table, licking a paw, fluffy tail in the sugar dish. The old lady had spoken to Slaney at length but he hadn’t understood a word.

She had become passionate, knocking her chest with her fist. She put on the kettle and talked while it came to a boil and Slaney stood until she waved at a chair for him to sit down. She poured him tea but he’d only had a couple of sips before she took the cup from him and waved him out of the kitchen.

The tone of her diatribe had changed. She’d become enraged. Perhaps she had told him her whole life story and was angry about where she found herself at the end.

Slaney had a sense that she’d pronounced on men in general and their ineffectuality and him in particular.

He was pretty sure she’d asked the question: Who will get my smokes for me now? He recognized the castigating tone but had only an intuition about the content. She shut the door on him and he heard the chain slide across again.

He saw himself backing out of her apartment with the suitcase and the doll in the pink box, trying to say thank you. Trying to say someone else would surely come along and buy her smokes.

Jennifer was lost to him.

She was gone.

He’d lost her for good. He swirled the stein in small circles, slopping sticky mint drink onto the floor.

Hearn was mouthing off about acting to a group of girls who were nodding along with everything he had to say.

Everything is in the fingers, Hearn said. Use the fingers. He began pinching at the air in front of him, as if grabbing butterflies. He was tripping.

Don’t push away, he said. Bring it in, bring it all in. Whatever you have is inside. Keep it there. Don’t emote. Hearn shut his eyes and waved his hand as if to wipe the idea of emoting off the face of the earth.

Do you see what I’m doing here, he asked. His eyes flew open again. Do you see what my fingers are doing? He was pinching and pinching.

I’m transforming, he said. I’m taking the character from the air in bits and pieces. I am becoming the character. The girls looked aroused and dumbstruck.

Slaney listened to Hearn and watched the dancing in the living room through the kitchen door. He felt a warmth spreading in his solar plexus: what he felt for Hearn was love. Eternal and thin, a steel cord from which he might end up dangling.

We are just skin, Hearn said. We act with our skin.

One of the girls gathered around Hearn was nodding in agreement and she had things she wanted to say and she kept opening her mouth to speak but Hearn would hold up a finger and she would clamp her mouth shut and just nod more vigorously.

They’d set up a black light in the living room and everything white out there was purplish and inner-lit and there were arms churning in the air and people grinding hips. It was all bright white teeth and a girl in phosphorescent hot pants doing the bump. Slaney wanted to dance with her.

Go for it, Hearn told him. Go get her, tiger.

Slaney raised his beer stein in the air before him and gestured in big circles to clear a path through the bodies. But nobody moved out of his way.

The girl beside him was talking about vegetarianism and he hung on the edge of the conversation. There was a story about a chimpanzee reaching out of its cage with a tree branch. Its shoulder wedged against the bars. Raking a peanut over the pavement with the branch.

Primitive tool use, somebody said.

Tell me that animal wasn’t communicating, the girl demanded. There was also a girl with a Spanish accent that made everything she said sound like a dare. Pass me a drink: that was a saucy taunt. Where’s the john: a provocation.

Another girl, near the sink, was dancing to some pulsing lull that had nothing to do with the music on the hi-fi, her beer bottle raised over her head, more swaying than dancing. Eyes closed.

Somebody put on Chilliwack.

And then her eyes flew open and she yelled, Eat nothing with a face.

What about plants? somebody asked. And somebody else asked: Do plants have a consciousness?

It was agreed, almost at once: nobody in the kitchen could get behind plants. It wasn’t that kind of gathering. Plants did not have primitive tool use.

Slaney stuck his arm out straight with the emerald stein in his fist and plowed his way out of the kitchen. He was making his way through the dance floor to Hearn’s girlfriend and Roy Brophy. A blue light from the stereo console lit up the knee of Brophy’s jeans. Hearn’s girl had backed Brophy into the leaves of a banana tree. He had taken a handkerchief from his back pocket and was wiping his face.

Hello, Roy, Slaney said. Having a chat, are you?

Shooting the shit, Roy said.

You’re Barlow’s girlfriend, Slaney said. Her eyes were brown and very big and he could see she was smart, like Hearn had told him.

What are you drinking, Doug? she asked.

Crème de menthe, he said. No matter what I pour into a glass, when the clock strikes two it turns into crème de menthe.

Like water into wine, she said.

Or peach schnapps.

Yeah, she said. Peach schnapps. I’ve had that happen at two in the morning.

Aftershave, Slaney said.

No, she said. And she slapped his arm and he saw she was more than a little drunk.

No, not really, he said. What were you and Roy here talking about?

Housing, she said. Development.

Roy, you’re a developer?

Subdivisions, Roy said. Apartment buildings.

We were talking about illicit love, she said. We were talking about when things turn around on you. Also a two
-
in-the-morning phenomenon, come to think of it.

Two is long gone, said Slaney. He was looking at the grandfather clock.

We were saying about first love, weren’t we, Roy.

You
were saying, Brophy said.

Now, Roy, she said. Coy Roy. Roy fell in love with his father’s mistress.

Patterson touched the handkerchief to his brow. He had not meant to say it. Her eyes. The unabashed interrogation: she’d asked him what mattered to him. She’d asked about love.

She’d said, How old are you, Mr. Brophy? He found he liked the attention. Her hand on his chest, pushing him into the big tree behind him.

Tell me a secret, she’d said. Clarice had kissed him. His father’s mistress. Thirty years ago when he was sixteen.

Patterson had come into being then. A ravishment. The wind in the trees outside her house. It had been windy and he’d ridden there on his bike.

A bead of sweat hung off Patterson’s eyelash and the room became five distinct rooms arrayed on a wheel that slowly turned, the girl under the black light in the white hot pants, glowing like the moon, she was at the centre of each replicated floating crowd. Hearn’s girl kept him pinned with her hand, and her eyes became five sets of eyes and they floated around him too. And the sweat dropped and his vision focused again.

Patterson had ridden his bike over. Delivering the monthly cheque. Clarice Connors and his half-brother, Alphonse, in the house at the end of a long lane outside of town. She’d drawn his tongue into her mouth and afterwards in the bathroom he saw the red, red lipstick smeared all over his lips and chin: the wanton girlish abandon of it. The affair continued for almost a year. He had been devoured and changed and he’d learned things and just as suddenly as it had started, it was over.

Your father’s mistress, Slaney said.

Not really, said Patterson.

Yes, Hearn’s girlfriend said. Yes, Roy, you told me. He loved her. Didn’t you, Roy? After his father passed away. Have I got that right? Didn’t your father cheat on your mother with this woman? What do you think, Doug, is he for real?

I don’t know, Slaney said. Your boyfriend seems to think so.

It seemed likely to Slaney that Hearn’s girlfriend knew everything about the trip. He wondered how many people at the party knew. How many people had Hearn let in on it?

Later, Slaney found Hearn in a lineup for the bathroom. There were five people ahead of them and someone was making out in there. The girl at the front of the line was banging on the door with both fists.

Barlow, how are you, man, Slaney said.

He’s a better man than I’ll ever be, Hearn said.

Who? Slaney thought he meant Barlow.

My father, Hearn said. He had his head tilted back so he could watch the ceiling.

There’s a hole in the goddamn roof, Hearn said. I can see the cosmos. And the cosmos can see me.

Did you go upstairs? Slaney asked him. You probably left the keys up there.

I went upstairs, but I gave you the keys first. Or you took them.

Is that what you think? Slaney asked. He waited for Hearn’s awakening. Hearn stood there accusing, but the awakening was imminent. It would burst over him in fits of anguish and euphoria by turns due to the acid he had taken.

Hearn had jumped bail and gone to university and everybody called him John and it looked like he’d made friends. Theatre people and people from the literature department where Hearn was studying for a Ph.D. They were students and it seemed like a life Slaney would never be a part of.

Hearn had friends. Slaney felt jealous.

He didn’t think of Jennifer so much as she became present to him again. Once, they had been making out in his father’s car near the ocean and a butterfly flew in his window and out the passenger’s window, a yellow butterfly, and she hadn’t seen it because her eyes were closed. It paused on the steering wheel, opened and shut its wings. It lifted off, and up, down, up, down, out the other window and she had missed it.