I don’t think she saw Whynet-Moir looking at us just then, while her hand was making contact through the fabric with a stiff and unyielding object. Man, she was bold. You ever had a stiff one get caught in your pant-leg? I didn’t want to wait until the book-signing, I wanted to fuck her right then, wanted to get down on the floor with her and fuck her while everybody else wiped gravy from their chins.
But as I was sitting there toughing it out, things got really awkward: Flo caught one of her rings in my zipper. She tugged, and it wouldn’t come free.
Today’s pop-up from Horace Widgeon: Do not over-embellish your main suspect. The experienced mystery reader, aware that too many fingers of suspicion are pointed at some blackguard, will invariably dismiss him from contention, thus narrowing the field in the great battle of wits between writer and reader.
What was the secret message? Did Widgeon suspect that Cuddles was innocent, that the real murderer lurked elsewhere? Brian can see why Widgeon feels sympathy for Cud. He’s human, he has feelings, though he lets the little head do most of his thinking. Under a thin shell of braggadocio, he seems kind of scared. When you go over his story carefully, as Brian had, capturing the hidden essences, you start to wonder if Cud isn’t telling the truth-maybe Florenza was coming on like a ballistic missile.
It wasn’t right that Cud found himself in such a pickle. Brian would feel terrible if this working-class hero went down for killing Rafael Whynet-Moir, so he’ll dry out, he’ll pull out the stops.
He’d researched Florenza LeGrand, googled her: a teenaged delinquent, a runaway, her parents had to pull her out of an Oregon ashram and deprogram her. A few years later, she got busted in Guadalajara, shacked up with a Mexican dope dealer. It cost mucho dinero for her parents to repatriate her. They plunked her into an elite New England college that doubles as a finishing school. Marriage to the polished, worldly Rafael Whynet-Moir would straighten her out, everyone said.
Reminder: he must ask Special Prosecutor Abigail Hitchins if Florenza remains uncooperative. He must respond to Abigail, whose recorded messages have grown caustic and rude.
Enough of abstinence. He chopped up a snifter. It’s just a party drug, an ice cream habit, coke light, a little fizz to perk him up when worries get him down. He should go out to score another gram, but the thin man was always there, the stalker. Was he to be feared? Were he an assassin, Brian would be dead by now. The man had some business with the author, but what?
Brian’s neighbourhood ATM had turned against him, cancelled their friendship. He’d had to cash in his RRSPs to buy gifts for Caroline and the kids. Flowers for her, roses of love and repentance. Yesterday, Santa’s sleigh-a rip-off artist’s two-ton van-delivered to the backyard a three-thousand-dollar haunted playhouse.
Rubbing his nose, he studied the slumped rider with two arrows in his back. Funny how he looked just like Cud.
The Mormon Tabernacle Choir was coming through the wall, three ships a-sailing in from Room 303. From some nearby slum apartment, children being threatened in song, Santa’s gonna see if they’ve been naughty or nice. In Cantonese. Add to this cacophony: a busker pounding bongos outside. “Books! Books! Books!” Christmas fucking morning at the Ritz.
He was disappointed in April Fan Wu. He’d asked her out for Christmas dinner.
“That might not be a good idea under the circumstances.”
“My circumstances are that I am divorced.”
“My circumstances are that I left Hong Kong to escape from a boss who wanted to have sex with me.”
Brian felt aggrieved that she assumed he, too, was so inclined.
“I’m sorry, but I have plans to be with my partner.”
“I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.”
“She isn’t a boyfriend.”
He’d have looked up one of his ex-illicit-lovers, but he’d lost touch with them. All but Abigail Hitchins, who had gone from promiscuous label whore to machisma-pumping ultra-feminist. She was probably a lesbian now too. That’s what they do.
Brian hadn’t been with a woman since Roseanne. Affairs didn’t seem like fun any more, not since he got divorced; they lacked edge, the sense of illicit adventure. Were Caroline to have him back, he’d never stray, he’s learned his lesson. He will congratulate her for her prize for Sour Memories. He’ll even finish reading it.
It isn’t much consolation, but life is even more difficult for Cuddles.
Not only was her ring snagged on my fly, she couldn’t get it off her finger either-there wasn’t wriggle room. And her old man was starting to look at us sideways, maybe wondering why his wife was eating her dessert left-handed. I was rattled-it’s not like we could casually rise and say, Excuse us, we had a bizarre accident.
The ring, which was gold with an opal, by the way, on her middle finger, got snagged on that little deal you use to pull the zipper up. Its end had broken off. So she whispers, “Fuck, do something.” I scoop a patty of butter and work it around her finger, which finally slides free, and by now I have a boner like the spire of St. Mary’s.
There is a proper genre for the carnal, and it isn’t crime, hectors Widgeon in a finger-wagging sermon about not making a disgusting exhibition of one’s swollen libido to the gentle, mystery-devouring sweethearts who prefer blood-spattered bodies to hot buttered cock. Brian contemplated his cellphone, finally switched it on, dialed, connected with Abigail Hitchins’s machine. “Pomeroy here, diligently returning your calls, and it’s, I don’t know, somewhere around three p.m…”
She came on. “It’s noon. Are you blasted already?”
“On Christmas Day you’re screening your calls?”
“From my mother. In case you forgot, we have a one-week trial starting in February.”
“I got it in my daybook.”
“Did you see my e-mail? A list of facts we’d like admitted. Non-contentious shit, street maps, house plans, dates, times, places.”
Brian vaguely remembered something like that.
“Without admissions this sucker’s going to last two weeks.” A pause. “What are you doing for Christmas dinner?”
“Hiding from the people watching me.” Why does she laugh?
“Yeah, and I’m hiding from my damn mother. Want to get together? We can go over my non-contentious wish list.”
“I’m too broke.”
“I’ll buy. Let’s say seven-thirty, Il Giardino. I’ll phone to confirm. Keep your fucking cell on. Capisce?”
“Capisce.” She was too eager, which was disconcerting. She had, unfortunately, become enraptured with Brian lo those many years ago, and with lamentable intensity. But that was the 1990s, another century. She’d had relationships since, a failed marriage, then five years sleeping with her therapist.
Brian looked out, the bongo busker was still working the street, another at the Keefer corner, doing mime. He was probably in on it with the doorman. The thin man was the leader, but he wasn’t around right now. There was Harry the Need, under Quick Loans, No References Required. He was the only one Brian could trust.
Abigail called right back. “We’re on. You still allowed to drive?”
“Had to sell the Honda to make ends meet.”
“I’ll pick you up, how’s that?”
“No, I’ll get there.”
“Where are you, Brian?”
They always want to know. “Ciao.”
9
He was scrambling down in inky darkness, going too fast, slipping on lemons. Suddenly, spread below him, were the lights of a throbbing city with a great cathedral…no, a colonnaded courthouse. He had taken the wrong trail, the one to the precipice. He was falling, falling…
Arthur awoke in fright, took his bearings. It was noon. It was Christmas Day. He was on a couch and the Aeneid was lying open on his stomach. He was in the woofers’ house, with its youthful clutter of art film posters, electronic gizmos, compact disks, Japanese paperbacks. Arthur had proposed to Margaret in this very living room. Clearly she now regretted having signed on to the deal.