Lady Oracle (38 page)

My stomach went cold. This was the thing I had feared the most. I’d been so careful; had Chuck told him? If he’d wanted to really hurt me, of course that’s what he would’ve done.

“Everybody knows about that. Even my husband knows about
that”
I said, with enough contempt to dismiss it as a negotiable item. “The man practically issued press releases. He sold two of my shopping lists in a sealed envelope to a university; he swore they were love letters. He filched them from my purse. Didn’t you know that?” Selling samples of my handwriting was something Chuck had often threatened to do – he needed the bread, as he put it – but as far as I knew he’d never done it.

Fraser Buchanan’s face fell like a section of badly engineered land fill: if Arthur already knew, he could gain nothing by threatening to tell him.

“How did you get in?” I asked conversationally, to smooth over his confusion. I was interested, too: I’d met a lot of amateur con-men but never a professional. “It couldn’t have been the window over the fire escape.”

“No,” he said, “it was the one next to it. I swung myself across.”

“Really?” I said. “That’s quite a distance. And I suppose that was you phoning me and then not saying anything.”

“Well, I had to make sure you weren’t there, so I could get in.”

“Sort of backfired though,” I said.

“Yes, but you would’ve found out sooner or later.”

He explained how he’d tracked down my maiden name, which had never appeared in an interview, by combing the records of marriages. “Were you really married by someone called Eunice P. Revele?” he said. Then he’d searched through high-school yearbooks until he’d found me. Matching me with Louisa K. Delacourt had been a guess, which he’d needed to substantiate by finding evidence. The Royal Porcupine had been the easiest; he’d also thought that was his ace in the hole, but to my relief he conceded it wasn’t.
“Marriage isn’t what it used to be,” he said with disgust. “A few years ago that would’ve been worth a bundle. Now everybody tells everything, you’d think it was a competition.”

I asked him about the dead animals, also about the notes. “Why would I do a thing like that?” he asked with genuine surprise. “There’s no percentage in that. I’m a businessman.”

“Well, if you’ve been following me around, you might have seen who left them. The woodchucks and things.”

“I don’t work in the mornings, love,” he said. “Only at night, I’m a night person.”

We had another drink and then got down to brass tacks. “What do you want out of all this?” I asked.

“Simple,” he said. “Money and power.”

“Well, I don’t have much money,” I said, “and I don’t have any power at all.”

But this he refused to believe. He hated celebrities, he felt they diminished him. All of them, however ephemeral, had money and power, according to him. Not only that, none of them had any talent really, at least not any more than the next fellow. Therefore they had got where they had through chicanery and fraud and they deserved to be relieved of some of their cash. He was especially contemptuous of
Lady Oracle
and of my publisher, and he was convinced that I’d got the book published by using my feminine wiles. “He’s always launching young unknown ladies, that man,” he said, during his fourth drink. “With big pictures of them on the back of the book, just the face and neck and down to the tits. Flash in the bedpan, most of them. No talent.”

“You should take up literary criticism,” I said.

“What,” he said, “and give up my practice? Doesn’t pay enough.” He never used the word “blackmail,” and he referred to the others he had the goodies on, as he put it, as his clients.

“Who else?” I said, my eyes wide and appreciative. I was letting him bask.

It was here that he made his mistake. He took out his black notebook, thereby letting me know of its existence. “Of course, I can’t tell you those things they’d rather people didn’t know,” he said, “same as I’ll never tell yours. But just to give you an idea –” He read out seven or eight names, and I was suitably impressed. “Here’s one, now,” he said. “Clean as a whistle, you’d think. It took me six months on him. But it was worth it. Little boys’ bottoms, that was his. All right if you like that sort of thing, I suppose. You can always find something if you keep at it long enough. Now, back to business.”

I had to have that notebook. My only hope was to keep him in the bar long enough to get him drunk and snitch it out of his jacket pocket. I’d noted which one it was in. Unfortunately, I was getting a little drunk myself.

After a long involved conversation, which got slower and more circuitous with every drink, we sawed off at twenty percent of my income. I’d have to send him duplicates of my royalty statements, he said, so he’d know I wasn’t cheating. “Think of me as a sort of agent,” he said. He had the same arrangement with several other authors.

As we got up to leave, he placed his hand discreetly on my ass.

“Your place or mine?” he said, lurching.

“Yours, by all means,” I said. “I’m married, remember?”

It was a lot easier than I’d thought. I tripped him going up the steps to his fancy apartment building, and got the book while helping him up. I got into the elevator with him and waited till the door was closing. Then I slipped out and ran from the building. I fell down myself, once, ripping my hem, but it wasn’t serious. I hopped into a taxi and that was that. Slick as television, almost.

Arthur was home when I got back. I could hear him typing away in his study,
rat-a-tat-tat.
I locked myself in the bathroom, took off
my velvet dress, and went through Fraser Buchanan’s notebook. Black leather binding, no name or title, gilt edges. The writing inside was tiny, like cockroach tracks. I scarcely bothered with the quite astonishing revelations he’d put down; I was looking, compulsively, for myself.

The book was organized like a diary, by dates. Useful items were starred; the rest was Buchanan’s somewhat rambling notation. Most of the time he used only initials.

And later:

And later:

And even later:

He was systematic, all right. What did I ever say to offend him? I wondered. Was it hatred I was reading, or just hardheaded mercenary cynicism? Did I point my tits at him that night, or not? I supposed a short man would experience it that way. Was my laugh inane? He did hate me, I felt. I was a little hurt, as we’d just had a pleasant evening.

But it didn’t matter, since I had the book and I intended to keep it. No doubt he would try to get it back; he’d be desperate, it was his living. It was also incriminating evidence: it was in his handwriting, it had his name on it, the address was inside the cover, it was undeniable. I was surprised no one had tried to steal it before. But then, he may not have told anyone else about it.

I tore out a choice page and sealed it into an envelope. I would send it to him in the morning, like the ear of a kidnap victim, just to let him know I had the book. I enclosed a note as well:
If anything happens to me the book is in good hands. One word from you and it goes to the police.
Stalemate, I felt.

I went to bed before Arthur did, but I lay awake long after he went to sleep, trying to undo the tangle that my life had become. At any moment Paul might swoop down on me, figurative sword in hand, and perpetrate some disastrous rescue that would ruin my life. Now Fraser Buchanan would be trying to get his book back. I’d have to think of a good place to hide it; a locker in the subway station, or maybe I could keep mailing it back and forth to myself … no, that wouldn’t do. I might get a safe-deposit box in a bank.

Malevolence was flowing towards me, around me, someone was sending me absurd but threatening notes, phoning me up and breathing; Fraser Buchanan accounted for only some of those calls. Someone was leaving dead animals on the doorstep, and if it wasn’t the Royal Porcupine it was someone who knew about him. Who could possibly have found out? Perhaps one person was doing the
animals, another the notes, a third the phone calls … but I couldn’t believe that. It had to be a single person, with a plan, a plot that had some end in view.…

Then all at once I knew. It was Arthur. The whole thing was Arthur. He’d found out about the Royal Porcupine, he must’ve known for some time. He’d been watching me all along, not saying anything; it would be like him not to say anything. But he’d made a decision about me finally, a pronouncement, thumbs down. I was unworthy, I would have to go, and this was his plan to get rid of me.

I thought about how he could have done it all. The anonymous letters would be easy. I could check our Yellow Pages to see if anything had been cut out, but he wouldn’t be that careless. Most of the phone calls had been made when he wasn’t home, though it was true that for some of them he’d been there. But he could have got a friend to help him. (Who?) The animals, anyone could find dead animals. Planting them on the doorstep would be more difficult, especially since I’d made a point of getting up first lately. But he could have put them there at night.

He was the one, he must be; he was working up to something and I didn’t at all want to know what it was. The easy explanation would be that he’d gone crazy, in some very deep and undetectable way. But it didn’t have to be that at all. Every man I’d ever been involved with, I realized, had had two selves: my father, healer and killer; the man in the tweed coat, my rescuer and possibly also a pervert; the Royal Porcupine and his double, Chuck Brewer; even Paul, who I’d always believed had a sinister other life I couldn’t penetrate. Why should Arthur be any exception? I’d known he had phases, but I hadn’t suspected this completely different side to his personality; not until now. The fact that I’d taken so long to discover it made it all the more threatening.

Arthur was someone I didn’t know at all. And he was right in the bed beside me. I was afraid now, almost afraid to move; what if he
woke up, eyes glittering, and reached for me …? For the rest of the night I listened to him breathe. He sounded so peaceful.

I had to get away, as quickly as possible. If I simply went to the airport and got on a plane, anyone at all would be able to trace me. My life was a snarl, a rat’s nest of dangling threads and loose ends. I couldn’t possibly have a happy ending, but I wanted a neat one. Something terminal, like scissors. I would have to die. But for this I needed help. Who could be trusted?

I
n the morning I waited till Arthur was out of the house. Then I phoned Sam.

“I have to see you,” I said, “it’s important.”

“What’s up?” he said. Marlene had answered the phone, and Sam sounded as if he was still asleep.

“I can’t talk about it over the phone.” It was an article of faith with Sam that his phone was bugged by the CIA, or at the very least the Mounties, and he was probably right. Also, I wanted to sound paranoid enough from the very beginning to convince him.

“Should I come over?” he said, perking up.

“No,” I said. “I’ll meet you in front of Tie City on Bloor Street in half an hour.” Sam lived in the Annex, I knew he could make it if he rushed. I wanted him to rush; it would make him feel more urgent. Then I hung up, mysteriously.

I’d thought very carefully about the story I was going to tell them, for of course it would be both of them; there was no chance that Marlene wouldn’t come along too. The truth was out of the question, as usual. If I told them the truth they’d feel they couldn’t
help me, since according to the ideology merely personal problems weren’t supposed to be very significant. If I could get each of them alone it would be different, but together they were each other’s witnesses and potential accusers. I needed the right villains, persecuting me for a cause they’d consider important. I felt a little cheap about this. Sam, like most of the group members, was essentially honest, in a devious sort of way; whereas I was essentially devious, with a patina of honesty. But I was desperate.

I waited nervously in front of Tie City, looking at the ties in the window and glancing from time to time over my shoulder, until Sam and Marlene appeared. They’d actually taken a taxi, which gave me hope: ordinarily they never took taxis.

“Look normal,” I told them in a low, furtive voice. “Pretend you’re walking along the street.” We walked along the street, heading west, and I told them the place and time of the real meeting. “I thought I saw one of them at the corner,” I said. “Don’t let yourself be followed.” Then we separated.

That afternoon at three-thirty we met in the Roy Rogers, the one on Bloor west of Yonge. I ordered a vanilla milk shake. Sam had a Roy with the works. Marlene ordered a Dale Evans.

We carried our trays to a round table beside a plate-glass window, through which we could see a small backyard with an enormous Coca-Cola billboard in it, boy and girl linking healthy eyes and swilling.

“You picked a great place,” Sam said. “They’d never suspect this joint.”

“Did you know you can get authentic Trigger Shit by sending away for it?” Marlene asked.

“Authentic, balls,” Sam snorted. “There’s more of that around than pieces of the True Cross. Besides, the real Trigger was stuffed and mounted years ago.” Marlene looked put down.

I checked the underside of the table, as if for hidden mikes. Then I leaned toward them. “They’ve found out about the dynamite,” I said.