Famous Last Meals (7 page)

Several people were impressed to learn that Don had been the
PM
's principal secretary. A woman with a toddler riding her hip and another circling her bare leg said, “That's great, a man being a secretary. We should all be so secure in our sexuality.” A man asked if Principal Secretary was anything like Secretary General. Another, running up the walk and into the front door from a car idling on the street, wanted the government to ensure broadband internet access everywhere in the country. “You're lucky to catch me this time of day. Phone's out of juice, can you believe it, and I have to check my messages. My wife wasn't here earlier, was she? She didn't happen to mention a certain delivery? She wasn't here. You said that already. I am a bad, bad, bad listener.”

By noon Adam was feeling tired but good about the number of houses he had been to and the number of people who seemed receptive to his candidate. Most of the printed matter he had been carrying was now in other hands. He had eight requests for election signs. Even when they said they weren't going to vote for Feeney, they were friendly about it. “No hurt feelings, eh, buddy?”

He was thinking about these welcoming strangers as he walked toward the restaurant on Quinpool where he and Oliver had agreed to meet for lunch. A club sandwich and a tall strawberry milkshake floated in tandem just ahead of him.

“Are you not aware of the time, Adam Lerner?” came a startling voice. A black Cadillac with darkly tinted windows kept pace as he walked, stopping when he did at the sound. The head of Mrs. Fallingbrooke, framed in the open passenger window, awaited his answer. When he gave none, opening his mouth only to close it, she said, “I believe we had a ten o'clock.”

“You weren't serious.”

“About matters of national security I am always serious.”

He could not see who was driving. She lowered her window farther and handed him a sealed business-size envelope with his name on it.

“Don't disappoint me again, Adam. You owe it to yourself and your country. Cecil and I, as you know, travelled the globe, and I can tell you unequivocally that we live in the finest nation in the world, bar none. You are temporarily misplaced and misguided in your efforts, not an uncommon failing in people your age. In your case, however, given your potential, your fondness for intrigue and your recent experience in a certain government parking lot, it is best that you be returned to the shining path of idealism. So.” She murmured something indistinct to the driver of the car. “It's all set out and quite self-explanatory, as you will see when you open it and read your instructions. Until we meet again, I bid you adieu.”

The window rose, obscuring her smiling face, and the car moved smoothly away. He looked at the envelope in his hand, which was beginning to tremble the way it might were it holding an activated grenade.

Quinpool Road west of Robie Street lacked shade, pretension and taste. As Adam walked, he passed a sex shop, a supermarket, several fast food outlets, a bank, a manicurist, a barbershop window reflecting the yellow of old issues of
National Geographic Magazine
, restaurants Thai, Indian, Chinese and Greek, a skateboarding store, a candy shop sharing a wall with a health-food store, another that sold dubious nutritional supplements to body builders, a pet store, an electronics store and a tarot-card psychic.

Oliver was talking to Emma in front of the place where he and Adam had agreed to meet, the sort of diner he had envisioned earlier at breakfast. He wondered why they were standing outside. She tucked some hair behind her ear and adjusted her purse strap on her shoulder. She looked like a sales rep in her skirted business suit, sienna orange with matching heels and lips, pale face, dark eyes.

What was she doing there? He had been rehearsing what he was going to say to Oliver. If Emma had been alone Adam might have drawn her into the restaurant and demanded that she treat him better. He would probably tell her about Mrs. Fallingbrooke's note. Why he couldn't make his excuses to Oliver while Emma was standing there made no sense, except that now she was part of this. What was this need to make her his confidante? Would she even want to be included? She had probably been going somewhere else when she saw Oliver. A quick hello-goodbye, see you back at the ranch, was all that need happen. Then Adam could give his regrets regarding lunch to Oliver, the old sad-sack, stuffed-shirt-in-training. With heart tripping and lungs in his throat, Adam would set off to find the address written on the old woman's stationery, which had in its letterhead a nude bathing under
a waterfall.

Close enough now to see their expressions, he understood that this was no chance meeting. Oliver probably always looked this serious, but Emma, glancing at her watch and shifting her shoulder strap again, was grim and fidgety. Her hands were working at the clasp of her purse when she saw him. Relief and impatience combined in her face. The hands kept making furtive movements with the purse as she spoke.

She told him what she had told Oliver, which was that they had to cut their fieldwork short and return to the hotel. Something urgent had come up. There was going to be a press conference.

“Did you have a good time last night?”

“Didn't you hear what I said?”

“I asked an innocent question.”

“We should be heading back,” said Oliver.

“I'll meet you both there. I have something to do first. It won't take me—”

“Yes, I had a great time, as a matter of fact. Stewart is so talented. Do you want to know what we did? Oliver, hold up a sec.”

“No, I really do not.”

“Adam,” she said, “you have to come back to the hotel now.”

“I can get the details from you later.”

“No, you can't.”

“Why not?”

“You'll see when you get there.”

“Now who's being cryptic?”

“If I tell you, will you come back with me? Now? No detours?”

“He's too old for you.”

“Stop changing the subject!”

“Well, he is.”

“It's none of your business.”

“Excuse me for caring.”

“Listen. Just shut it and listen for two seconds, please. One of the other candidates is making incriminating charges against Don.”

“Who? What are they saying?”

“Bliss. He won't say what he's got on Don. All he'll say is that he's infiltrated the Feeney campaign, and that one of us is feeding him information. He has a name.”

“One of us?”

From the way they looked down and away, Adam knew that he was that name.

Opening the old woman's note, reading the address to which he was supposed to report and the name, unfamiliar at first then shockingly remembered, of the person he was charged to meet, Adam recalled what the old woman had said before closing the car window and preventing inquiry. How had she known? He wondered how much of his private life was known only to him.

LB had released a name to the ravenous press. Adam could guess what level of anxiety now filled the room occupied by the Don Feeney election team. The
PM
was supposed to touch down in Halifax to lend support to the campaign before continuing to a meeting in Brussels. The timing could not have been worse. Of all of them, Adam was the one who would be hustled onto another plane and flown back to the capital city. Knowing this, he did something that would very much have pleased his nine-year-old, James Bond besotted self. When Oliver, Emma and he got back to the hotel, Adam slipped out of the elevator just as the doors were closing and ran outside.

He had a route in mind, a circuitous one that would, he hoped, throw anybody following him off the scent. He giggled at the thought. Whatever had formerly kept him in traces, harnessed to obligation and duty, was gone. He was staying ahead of out-and-out panic by half a step. Like a surfer with a monstrous roller crashing its curl behind him, he felt fuelled by the energy of the gathering mass at his back. That he had been identified as a spy before he could become one seemed oddly right. He could deny it publicly while hiding a twinge of regret. He could sneak back into his room, pack, take a taxi to the airport, and fly home before anyone would notice. Except that yes they would notice, because he was the name. The press would want a face to go with the name and they would find him back in Ottawa. Better, he reasoned, knowing nothing about what might be reasonable in this situation, to let the wave break on him here. He was, after all, a member of a team. He had allies.

His route took him across the street and through the Public Gardens, where he sat on a bench under a drooping elm for a few minutes to see if anyone had come after him. He exited at the far corner, crossed Summer Street, entered the Camp Hill Cemetery, walked through to Robie Street and into the neighbourhood where he and Oliver had gone door to door that morning, came east along Quinpool and crossed Robie again, this time at the Commons, an open grassy expanse.

Men in white shirts and trousers were playing cricket, a game Adam enjoyed thinking about despite not knowing the rules. He sat with his back to a large tree near the sidewalk on Robie and watched. If anyone were following, they would have caught him by now. He looked at his watch. He still had a few minutes before the time indicated on Mrs. Fallingbrooke's invitation: “Proceed to the Breadfruit Bistro on Agricola. Arrive at two o'clock sharp.”

He didn't want to know the rules. He wanted only to sit there with the new-mown-grass smell in his nostrils, close his eyes and listen to the sounds of men from distant lands: Pakistan, Barbados, South Africa, Nigeria. Their chatter, less jittery and tense than might be heard at a baseball game, was singsong, punctuated by laughter and mock argument.

“I am cognizant of that!”

“You are bending your elbow far too much.”

“I am always, always, always, always cold.”

“Consider the alternative, brother!”

“Too hot, you mean?”

“No, feeling nothing at all.”

“Your feeble mind is always six feet under. Rise up, rise up and be thankful.”

The bowler approached at a run, the ball struck dirt, and the bat displaced air (did Adam hear it or was it only a passing car?) before making cracking contact. Still he resisted opening his eyes. More voices rose. Footfall neared, receded. Which of the loners in the field was chasing down the ball? Which stood daydreaming of tea and shortbread?

He did not care to learn the rules and he was not yet curious enough to demand to learn how the old woman knew about the exhaust-filled car in the parking lot of the Bureau of Secure Communication. How LB knew Adam before Adam knew him, why Monica had handed him Mrs. Fallingbrooke's name in the first place—he let the unknowns pop and fizz in their own ineluctable medium, and listened to the game being played on this other Commons, this parliament of recent immigrants on the grass.

Before he opened his eyes, Adam felt the shadow on his face.

“Wake up, young fool, wake up while you still can!”

He looked up, past the white shins, the crotch, up the broad sandwich board of LB's chest, his neck, chin, grillwork smile and mirthful eyes. Behind him were others similarly dressed. The over was over. Why, he wondered, had he not noticed the candidate earlier? He must have been standing far out in the field.

“Have you not a rendezvous? Are you not past the appointed time?”

From behind LB came a cacophony of laughter.

“When was the last time you were ever on time for anything, Bliss?”

“He was three weeks late for his own birth!”

“Birth? What about his wedding?”

“Which one?”

“Wedding! He'll be twice that late times three for his own funeral!”

Adam roused, stood, brushed grass clippings off the seat of his pants. Where was the restaurant, did anybody know? How should he go to get to Agricola Street?

“No, not that way! Go this. So much faster.”

“You're out of your mind. If he goes that way, who can say what end of trouble he'll get his same self into?”

Using a stick to draw lines in the dusty bowler's track, one of the players sketched the Commons, its boundary roads and interior paths. Everyone contributed to the editorial process, lines erased and redrawn like those of a gerrymandered electoral map, and soon a walking route was established. Adam thought about pulling out the city map he had in his pocket, but decided that taking it out now would only
complicate matters.

“Aren't you coming, too?” he asked LB. For the first time Adam thought about him as an ally rather than an opponent.

“Me? No, no. This is one meeting you must take yourself, Mister Adam. As you can see, LB is swimming against the swift current of political commitment.” More ironic laughter.

“As you can see, he is giving a press conference as
we speak!”

“Mrs. Fallingbrooke won't be there?”

“In spirit. Now off you go. We're both late. The fate of the free world lies in our hands, my virtuoso fingers and your lily-white lunch hooks.”

Adam set off along a paved path that roughly bisected the Commons on the diagonal. He headed northeast toward a large brown stone building that looked like an armoury. A man and his German shepherd crossed the path ahead of him. The dog had a piece of wood the size of a small fireplace log jammed sideways in its mouth. The man's jeans hung so low that it looked as if they would fall at any second. A kid on a bike with a loose chain guard clattered toward him and Adam had to step off the path to let him pass. The boy had such thick glasses that Adam wondered how he could see anything.

He reached the far corner of the Commons, found the street he wanted and headed for the intersection where the restaurant stood.

The only other customer was sitting with her back to the door, and so when Adam walked in he went past her, sat at a table in the middle of the room, and didn't look over at her until she said his name. He got up sheepishly and went over to her table.