I sat on a bench, fumbling with my boot strings, and I can’t remember the words, but I casually asked about Raffy. She said he’s probably in bed. Probably.
She opened the steam-room door, and I watched her little apple-cheek fanny disappear into the mist. I smelled of lust and rancid butter, so I went under the outdoor shower before following her into that dark, hot cave. There was only a dim glow through the glass door. Everywhere, steam was hissing and belching. I expected Satan to emerge from the gloom.
“How hot do you like it?” came her voice.
I told her again I was more interested in knowing if this was cool. I wanted to ask if this went on a lot, her old man going to bed early while she fucks a stranger. I am reckless by nature, and tonight I was drunk, but her partner was a judge. You don’t shag a judge’s wife without dire consequences.
She goes, “Chill out.” Rafael wasn’t feeling well, she said, he doesn’t hold his wine too good. I thought, if he’s not well, he’s probably awake. I remember her next line clear: “I gave him something to help him sleep.”
I remember that because I had this premonition I’d be busted with a vial in my backpack that’ll analyze for arsenic.
It’s called paranoia, Cud. You’re being portrayed by the master; no one knows paranoia like Brian Pomeroy. It gets worse when you’re out of white lady, the paranoia lingers like a perpetual hangover. It’s been a week since supplies ran out. Seven days, and the itches and tics and twinges continue, like rats biting. But he could feel it peaking, he might just be able to rout the devils, get clean. Good thing he wasn’t addicted, the struggle would be hopeless.
The Need won’t cuff him any more product, that’s the snag. Brian’s bank account was empty, his credit cards maxed, and his draw from the office wasn’t due till mid-January, five days hence. He might have to rob a bank. He imagined himself in the clink, a family visit, Caroline and the kids crying.
Words reshaped themselves like crawling insects as he stared at his screen, page up, page up, finally locating Flo’s opener. “You changed my life…” This stank of implausibility. A more alluring plot: she was conniving to suck a yokel into her orbit, to serve as a stooge in a homicide set-up. “We’ll just have to find some way to get rid of him.” Would his protagonist actually have got so drunk as to have done her bidding? Just to get laid?
Or would she have done the dirty herself? How? And with what motive? This was a brainbuster in his weakened state. Toss it about, Widgeon demands. Okay, he tossed it about. For public consumption, Whynet-Moir and the heiress pose as the happy couple, but Florenza can’t get no satisfaction. She wants to dump her erotically challenged partner. (This collides with reality, of course, because in the confusing realm of non-fiction, Whynet-Moir had clearly shown himself a letch, making eyes at Caroline in court. And she looking boldly back.)
Back to the more comforting world of fiction. Flo lacks grounds for divorce. That’s a risky route anyway-Whynet-Moir could walk off with half her fortune. So she decides to fast-track her way to widowhood. Though the carefree ex-flower child might seem an unlikely manslayer, in fact she will diagnose as one of those charming, guilt-free sociopaths that infest society.
That’s the story line, that’s the right plot for his creative nonfiction work. Which, unaccountably, he’d given to his shrink. What had he been thinking? She’s been phoning again. Her diagnosis has been amended, drug-induced psychosis. She’s looking for a care facility. Men in white are after him, men from the Clean Living Rehab Centre.
Chief Justice Wilbur Kroop is after him too. Little does he know that Brian welcomes his entry into this pot-boiling roman a clef. Finally he has a worthy villain. That was what this story lacked. Lex Luthor in a black robe with a crimson sash.
He butted out a cigarette into the soup dish he was using as an ashtray. He lit another, poised his shaking hands over the keyboard. Okay, so we have Cud being played by this psychopathic schemer, and she…What? Where does the author throw in his big twist? Pre-denouement? At the very end? It was exhausting thinking this through, especially when he was so antsy.
The Widgeon icon was jumping up and down, silently pleading, in its mind-reading way, to join the discussion. As your tale unwinds, you must guide your reader down delightful one-way roads and detours. I must admit in all modesty that I have a facility with the twist and have turned around my poor Inspector Grodgins so often, he must get dizzy! Ah, but Brian has devised a twist that will put his mentor to shame, a twist that might turn poor Grodgins’s head backward.
How eager Abigail was to nail Florenza LeGrand. Of far more interest than some country Joe in red braces. Together, they might pin the whole thing on Florenza.
Cud hadn’t told the cops-or anyone-that he’d shtupped the hostess. He was being honourable. He actually used that word. A part of his brain still believes she’s keen on him, on supporting the arts. Why hadn’t Brian insisted he hand over the opal ring? He’d better bring it to court. Does one confront Florenza with it? Or wear kid gloves? Should Brian even show his hand? Why hadn’t Florenza reported the ring missing? So many questions…
So far, no one had linked Judge Whynet-Moir, who went off a deck, with Judge Naught, who went off a wharf. These deaths were more than superficially tied together, no question. Not the others, though: the old fellow who fell from the ferry, the family court judge who disappeared from her family cottage.
The memo Arthur Beauchamp dictated to April Wu, what was that about? Whynet-Moir bribing the justice minister-it smelled of red herring. Apparently a lawyer named Schultz may know more of the story. Brian didn’t have the energy to deal with that right now, it was too confusing, too hard to prove, too unlikely.
He felt itchy all over, it was as if his skin were carpeted with tiny bugs. His quivering fingers hung uselessly above the keyboard, he was at an impasse. Somewhere after your first hundred pages, a dead end must be reached, seemingly insurmountable. But your hero must plod on-until, often by chance or mishap, inspiration comes like a flash, a whispered answer.
He got up, he paced, fidgeted, turned one of the prints to the wall. It was getting to him, the ravenous white eyes in the blackness, waiting for the cowboys to sleep. He rummaged about for his clunky old digital camera, went to the window, took a couple of pictures of the people he thought could be working for the other side. The Lucky Penny Pizza guy taking off on his bike. Guy in a ball cap crossing the street from the bookies, their runner. Harry the Need negotiating a sale under the awning of Quick Loans. Not Harry. Harry wouldn’t turn him in.
I was still drunkenly groping around this sweaty, foggy cave, trying to figure where her voice was coming from. She wanted to talk-lots of married women do that before getting it on, to explain they don’t do this all the time. She was hammered too, not as bad as me, going on about how she’d lived a lie for the two years they’ve been married.
“It’s like somebody owns part of you.” My poetry, Liquor Balls, Karmageddon, helped her “remember freedom,” it “aroused buried passions.” I believed her, how couldn’t I? Cudworth Brown, ex-ironworker with a bad back, had changed a life; his words had inspired a passion for freedom. A passion for me, the “beautiful, lustful savage” she saw in my writing.
I can’t bring it all back…Yeah, after I bumped into where she was sitting in a corner, I said something inane about soulmates. She said, “Fuck soulmates.” Her hands slid up my thighs, her body following, slick and hot.
We ended up on the floor, writhing like pythons on those slippery tiles, pumping like our lives depended on it. What? Sorry, there’s a lady present. I’ll spare you the pornography, but we were both about a half-inch from coming, when, whoosh, we got this jolt of cold air.