April Fool (13 page)

Lotis relents. “Okay, she's a borderline personality, she's twilight zone, she has a weird reason for deep-freezing the semen. Was she on birth control?”

“Nick was wearing a condom.”

“Arthur, the ugly truth about condoms…”

She pauses, looking at him bright-eyed, as if expecting him to understand the obvious.

“They break. Take it from me. That's how I ended up in my friendly neighbourhood pregnancy termination clinic–a dried-out safe my partner found in his trinket drawer. Ex-partner.”

“Actually, Faloon said the condom slipped off…”

“During intercourse?”

“As he was…yes.” Arthur reddens. “It was too large for him.”

“You are so…I don't know,
Arthurian
. Victorian. You're actually blushing. Whoa. Stop.” Her lynx eyes widen, her mouth forms a perfect oval. “I just had a flash how this could've played out. On close personal inspection, Angella finds that Nick has deposited more in her than in the safe. She starts freaking about disease and pregnancy. She flies off the hinges, calls the cops.”

Arthur finds it helpful to reassemble the facts in that light. Angella finding the recreant condom, hiding it in panic, calling 911. The idea of a tell-all magazine article comes later, as a bonus. It is a logical scenario, and one he should have urged on the jury.

Arthur orders the poires au chocolat. Relax, he tells himself, there's another ferry sailing at six, and Lotis is offering useful insight into eccentric Adeline Angella.

“She's some kind of polyester queen?”

“A fair depiction, I think.”

“Was she in a relationship at the time?”

“No. She has lived alone for her adult life.”

“Religious?”

“Catholic.”

“Anti-abortion?”

“She wrote newsletters for a pro-life organization.”

“Well, there you are.”

She's on the mark. Fear of pregnancy, the massive dilemma it posed–add religious guilt to this toxic mix, and Faloon becomes the luckless victim of an ill-fitting Trojan.

Lotis brushes hair from her face, leans forward to sniff the rose, in its slender vase. A picture deserving of a camera. Behind
this portrait of nose and rose and wayward hair, an agile and (dare he say) youthful mind is at work. Compensating for the cocky, in-your-face demeanour, for her naïve notions of building a classless society.

“Another problem dogs me. Should I dare you to come up with one last brilliance?” That's taunting, maybe even mocking. “I'm sorry, I'll shut up about the case.” A flock of starlings is raucously announcing the coming of evening. He gestures for the cheque.

“You've got me utterly fucking engrossed in this case, let's talk on the way to Garibaldi.”

“You're not going to Vancouver?”

“No. I'm going to be your new Woofer.”

She's a kidder. “You're crashing at Reverend Al's cottage?” He knows the lingo, he's cool, he does Tai Chi.

“I'm broke, I'm earning peanuts. I'm ready to woof. Save on rent and food, help with the chores, sounds cool. In my free time I prep for my bar exams and help steer Operation Eagle.”

Arthur doesn't like the feel of this. She would be up his nose all day. “Have you ever lived on a farm?”

“No, but it can't be that complicated.” She perseveres in the face of Arthur's smile of incredulity. “Okay, I'm a creature of the city, I dwell with the struggling masses. I wanted to do poverty law, but there were no jobs. But hey, the environment's a critical part of the struggle. Like the marijuanistas say, overgrow the government. I like Garibaldi, it's the most accidentally hip place I've ever been to. Clean air, good smoke. And I'm totally, totally wrapped in the Gwendolyn campaign.”

What might Margaret feel about Lotis moving into Bungle Bay? A tinge of jealousy, perhaps, that might persuade her to climb down from her perch?

“I hope you'll enjoy your stay.”

She rises. “Put me on pause while I go to the can.”

Now what has he got himself into? He can see the Woofer house becoming headquarters for the Anarchist League.
The woman was thrown out of her last place for having raucous meetings.

Lotis is still in the washroom when Pierre pulls up in his Peugeot. “When the cat's away, eh, Beauchamp?” He kisses his own fingertips. “Belle enchanteresse. I will drive to the ferry and you will add it to the tip.”

Arthur doesn't respond to his insinuations, though he takes pleasure from them.

Pierre holds open a door for Lotis, bowing like a courtier of the House of Bourbon. “Which sleazy motel would you and M. Beauchamp prefer?”

“I think we can hold out until we get home,” she says, frightening Arthur, giving him a squeeze. He can smell washroom soap. She's a hippie again, the makeup is gone, the lip ring back. She's in jeans, a work shirt with burn holes.

 

On the
Queen of Prince George
, they climb to the upper deck to watch the sun go down. Grebes and cormorants fish the bays, fir trees glow bright green with new spring skirts, the vivid yellow of flowering broom in clear-cuts and view corridors.

Soon all these islands will be city playgrounds, he doesn't see how that can be avoided.
You can't stop progress.
You can't stop humankind from its headlong rush to its overcrowded extinction. He doesn't share Lotis Rudnicki's belief that the world can put the brakes on.

She asks, “What's the one last brilliance you wanted from me?”

Arthur has been filling his pipe and is lost for a moment. “Ah, yes, Adeline Angella. Your diagnoses have been faultless to this point, so let me test you with this: what motive, however twisted, would drive her to implicate Nick Faloon in a murder?”

“To discourage the police from looking elsewhere. It's beyond gorgeous out here. Fade out into a Cecil B. deMille sunset.”

The dying sun burnishes the forested islets to the east, and overhead the clouds are the hues of wild roses, and to the west, scarlet. Arthur is staring at this display but isn't seeing it. “To discourage the police…Please expand on that.”

“The big question could be: What motive did she have to murder Dr. Winters? Maybe Angella was one of her patients, something bizarre developed between them.”

This comes with the sudden thud of revelation, and Arthur spills tobacco. He works so clumsily at getting his pipe lit that he burns his thumb. He must talk to Winters's secretary, or subpoena her clinical records. Why had he not considered such a link? His brain has become flabby, he must get it in trim or he may bungle this case. Alzheimer's, that's his fear.

 

On Garibaldi, Arthur finds the Toyota still at the dock, the Fargo still in Stoney's yard, and the backhoe still in Arthur's, its scoop in the air like a claw. It hasn't seen recent duty, the loss-leader pond remains undug. At least the tools are gone from the garage.

While Kim Lee helps Lotis settle into the Woofer house, he heads to his own. The first of the kids must have arrived today: Edna Sproule's truck is on the upper road, and flashlights are active in the goat corral. Edna is a fourth-generation islander, owner of Boris, billy-goat sperm donor. Arthur will join her after he changes into country clothes.

From the bathroom window, as he finishes showering, he hears a shriek of delight: “Whoa, he's adorabubble.” Lotis Morningstar Rudnicki has seen her first kid birth.

Arthur feels the threat of heartburn, his stomach gurgling, he ought not to have had the poires au chocolat. He decides to rest a bit. Soon he is asleep in his club chair. He dreams of Margaret in a birdcage. “Day five hundred!” the judge shouts. He's in court naked and unprepared. He cannot think of a question. He has lost his touch, lost his memory, lost everything.

 

11

A
t the Woofer house, over Kim Lee's breakfast, a hot gluey substance with seeds, Arthur plans his day. There will be extra chores with the kids–four so far. Edna Sproule's truck is in the yard, and though he knows he should help her, he feels depleted–April has been a cruel month.

He hears Lotis coming down the creaky stairs, late, she slept through the crowing cocks. She is clad in her sleeping garb, an oversized T-shirt that covers only the bare essentials. It urges, “Support the Sicamous Seven,” whoever they may be.

She squints at the wall clock. “Oops, didn't realize there was a seven-thirty call. Sorry, I had trouble falling asleep. Kept hearing a maniac laughing outside. Crept downstairs to check if the house was safe, and none of the doors was locked.”

Steadfastly averting his eyes from the junction of thigh and T-shirt, Arthur explains that the keys have been long lost, that what she heard was likely a screech owl.

“Drink coffee, yes?” Kim Lee extends a mug.

“Thank you, Sister Kim, is that birdseed porridge? I think I'll settle for a Tijuana breakfast: coffee and a hump.” She opens a window wide, lights her hump, sits on the sill, has the delicacy to cross her legs. “What's on the list of chores?”

“Have you ever milked a goat?”

“No, but I can fake it.”

Edna Sproule has midwived twin kids by the time Arthur and Lotis join her. “Udderly fantastic,” Lotis says, looking
awed at these sucking, wobbly-kneed progeny of hard-working Boris.

Edna frowns. “Where
have
I seen you before.”

“
Scream Seven
. Still available on video.”

“No…that commercial. Where the wife comes home to find her husband did the laundry, and there's a mountain of suds.”

“And I say, ‘Did you use enough soap, dear?'”

“Yes, that just breaks me up! You're the one in the ad! Oh, my. Oh, my.” She seems overcome.

“Girl's got to get through college.” Lotis seems to need to explain.

After the goat-milking demonstration, he shows her how to raid the chicken shed for eggs, introduces her to the greenhouse and vegetable garden, explains the uses of fork and hoe, shows her what a thistle looks like. Before the morning is over, she has managed to douse herself with the hose, wade into a bed of stinging nettles, and tear her jeans on barbed wire. Arthur enjoys every minute.

He will now take her up to the Gap, the highlight of the day. Margaret will learn he has a new playmate at Bungle Bay. The cat's away, and the mouse will play. Madam has the poet, after all, with whom to stay.

As Lotis is changing, a vehicle purrs up the driveway. Miraculously, it's the formerly mufflerless Fargo. Stoney has succumbed to a spate of initiative–the new muffler works well, except for a wheezing sound. He turns off the engine, takes a pull from a beer can.

“I straightened out that legal technicality with the backhoe, they're gonna give me a few more weeks because of this contract. So I'm gonna start on your pool like I promised, I'm a man of my word.”

To deny the existence of any contract would take too much effort. Arthur will let Stoney dig the pool. What damage can he do so far from the house?

“Got a muffler off Myron's old Chev, kind of had to bang her in place. Should hold until the next crisis. Told you I'd do it for free, but there's fuel costs, eh, and I'm in a kind of debit situation…”

Arthur reaches into his wallet, fans out some twenties.

“If you're going to take the old girl out for a spin, man, you may want to gas up.” Stoney sets to work, the backhoe chuffing into life.

Lotis returns, in black tights, distracting Stoney, who misdirects the machine into a thicket of salal.

“You are watching the birth of a pool.”

“Will it have a swim-up bar?”

“It will be shared by frogs and salamanders.”

“Glad I didn't bring my suit.” She pulls out a cigarette.

“I thought you were quitting.”

“After my carton runs out.” Brushes the hair from her almond eyes.

Their first stop is the three-pump gas station–the gauge was hovering below empty–the second is Hopeless Bay. Not Now Nelson Forbish is leaving the store, eating Cheezies. He's doing the rounds, delivering this week's
Bleat
on his ATV.

He extends a cheese-and-salt-coated hand to Lotis. “I don't think I've had the pleasure of the movie star.”

“I'd recall it if you had.”

Nelson brings out pencil and pad. “I heard you may be auditioning for Arthur's movie.”

Lotis looks perplexed. “Duh…what?”

“Not now, Nelson. We have a busy schedule.”

“A picture.”

Lotis hugs Arthur around the middle, and he starts like a nervous horse. Such embraces are natural to her–she's a performer, expansive, American–but foreign to him, rarely enjoyed even as a child. He's not sure what his reaction should be, and stands like a scarecrow, arms akimbo. Nelson says, “Another.” The feel of her supple body brings blood rushing,
Eros rising from the ashes of disuse. Accompanied, of course, by shame.

Hattie Weekes, the island's most fearsome gossip, is on the deck, squinting, capturing this. Arthur decides he may as well wrest advantage from the situation–word will go like the wind to the Holy Tree. He holds the door for Lotis. Hattie is already at the coin phone, stirring her wallet for a quarter.
A word once sent abroad
, said the great Horace,
flies irrevocably
.

A pile of
Bleat
s sits on the counter. “
HERE COMES HOLLYWOOD
!” shouts the front page. Nelson has relegated the Battle of the Gap to the inside. “An uneasy truce holds at the protest site, while lawyers rush off to court, the results of which aren't known at press time.”

Arthur tells Makepeace, “Ms. Rudnicki may charge anything to my account but cigarettes.”

The postmaster hands him a small sack. “If you're going by the Gap, this is for the preacher. Fifties and or hundreds, here and there, mostly cheques. This here's a generous one.” Makepeace holds an envelope to the light. “Two thousand on a bank in Chicago.”

“Someone said they seen her barenaked in a movie called
Bodice Ripper
.” This is Joe Rosekeeper, lascivious retiree, who's staring at Lotis through the plate window.

“Not Arthur's type,” Emily Lemay says. “No meat on her. Come over some evening, handsome, I'll serve you up some steak and potatoes.” She chortles, enjoys seeing him turn red. She's been flirting more boldly since breaking up with Handyman Sam.

Emily has just ferried from the city and brought today's paper: “
DAY SEVEN
!” Santorini's irate outburst has earned front page. A sidebar describes Arthur and Santorini as “former courtroom foes.” Arthur's streak of notable wins against the former chief Crown is mentioned, along with their imbroglio in court many years ago. Here is the horse's ass quote, the full text returning to him now, a reference to “kitchen cockroach ethics.”

Arthur imagines Santorini reading the paper over breakfast, his rage. He may go off the deep end when the hearing resumes tomorrow; Arthur must be alert for grounds of appeal.

Hattie Weekes is still on the phone, presumably describing the sordid scene of lust between the deserted husband and the brassy young snip. Let Margaret speculate. Let Nelson publish his photo: an aging Don Juan whose magnetic appeal lures the young and desirable.

 

At Stump Town there are more tents, more volunteers–about a dozen young pilgrims arrived this morning. Kurt Zoller is passing out business cards, and presses one into Arthur's palm. His water taxi service–“it's literally been running me into the ground”–now has prospects, but his compulsive wearing of life jackets inspires little consumer trust.

“Garibaldi isn't just a blob on the map now,” he tells Arthur. “More crowds are trickling in every day.” He has taken the measure of new political winds: “I've gone three hundred and sixty degrees on this one.”

“But that means you're back where you started, Kurt.” He leaves Zoller to redo his calculations.

Lotis has already gone up the Gap trail. He's relieved to be away from her high energy–she exhausts him. He joins Reverend Al, who is on a walkie-talkie with his spouse, Zoë, one of the watchers on the uplands.

“Still just the one bird, honey,” she says.

“Cheese and rice.” Jesus Christ. Reverend Al has an unhappy penchant for euphemism.

Arthur hands him the donations. “It's starting to roll in.”

“The judge wants eggs. We're running out of time.”

The deadline is tomorrow. Santorini's clerk has notified all parties that the hearing must move to Vancouver, where the judge is stuck with a multicount corporate fraud. The ferry involves a three-hour ordeal, so Arthur and Lotis will risk Syd-Air, “Serving Our Islands” with an aging Beaver. Arthur will
carry on to Bamfield. Lotis will gather clothes and essentials from her last city hideout before returning to Garibaldi.

When Arthur arrives at the Holy Tree he sees Margaret filling a bird feeder and Cud grunting as he ties a “Save Gwendolyn” banner to a branch. Lotis is below them, bending to Slappy, who licks her face. “And who is this cute little Woofer?” she says, then looks up, rewards the cameras of Flim Flam Films with a wink and a smile.

Margaret isn't smiling. He calls up, jocular: “Has Lotis told you she's taken a position at Bungle Bay?”

“I hope she'll work out.” A definite chill in her voice.

“She had a splendid start.”

“Yeah, I nearly ripped my crotch open on barbed wire.” Lotis gives Slappy a neck rub.

“Oh, dear.” Coated with ice.

“Darling, I'm sorry, but duty calls. I'll be off-island for the next few days.”

“I see. Well, you know where I'll be.”

“The Faloon matter will take a fair bite of my time.”

“And what about Garlinc versus Gwendolyn? Will you be spending any time on that?”

“I'll be in court for you, of course.”

“Not just for me, I hope. For all of us, for Gwendolyn.”

It strikes him that it's not Lotis that she resents, it's his rinky-dink role in the injunction. This has the makings of a marital row.

Cud returns from his bough, scuttles out of view, fearing to be entangled in this. Lotis drifts away. Husband and wife are one on one. He wants to shout,
Damn it, I love you, can't you see that?
Instead, he sulks. Reverend Al is on the scene now, making a slicing motion across a finger: cut this short.

Chickadees flit about the bird feeder. One lands on Margaret's outstretched hand. She waits until it flies off, then calls, “I heard the judge was pissed off at me.”

“The judge wants–well, you know what he wants.” He isn't about to make a public plea for Margaret to relent–what kind of message would it send? Santorini has made the situation worse with his brusque demand.

“I don't know how he can properly decide anything without coming here to see for himself.”

“The courts don't work that way, my dear.”

“Well, they bloody should.”

She's right. Damn it, he must stop apologizing for the system of laws and rules that he blindly cherishes.

Down comes a bag of laundry, which he dodges as it plops at his feet. “You might send up some fresh sheets and towels.”

She's steaming behind a stoic mask–the last time Arthur saw this face was when the decaying victim of a forgotten mouse trap stank up the pantry. This is not the time to admit he has no idea how to operate the washer and dryer.

As she returns to her bird feeder, he entertains the shuddering thought that he could lose this woman. He knows what she wants as proof of love: stop being a feckless noncombatant. Be a proud defender of Lady Gwendolyn. Fight for her as he would for any innocent client facing life.

“Tell Mr. Santorini to come here, Arthur. Tell him to smell the air of the forest and listen to the birds. We had a purple finch here yesterday.”

Arthur doesn't expect Justice Santorini will be interested in a purple finch.

“And if he still wants me to come down,” she says with a shrug, “tell him he can climb up here and get me.”

 

That evening Arthur is still flustered and bewildered by Margaret's chilly reception. (Guiltily, he found himself examining Margaret's sheets, on the growing mountain in the laundry room, for suspicious stains.) He calls Australia for help. Three years ago, his daughter Deborah fled a boring marriage. Three years before that, her mother ended hers with Arthur. It's
said that infelicitous events occur in cycles of three–is it Margaret's turn to break free?

He rails on to Deborah about the louche poet, about the cruel teasing he's been getting, the misfiring of Operation Morningstar, the negative vibrations from the high pulpit of the Holy Tree. “You told me to get active, impress her, make a famous return to the courts. Now she's miffed at me for ignoring her.”