Boy From Under

Victor Daly jabbed the up button as if the office tower had ribs, a central nervous system, a brain that could sense his impatience. Off to his left, a pair of high heels clicked a staccato against the foyer tiles; he resisted an urge to glance, guessing by the resolute tapping that the approaching woman must be in a state of near-panic, late for work or an appointment. As she got closer, though, he recalibrated. Something in the cadence signaled urgent but calm efficiency. The bell dinged, the door whooshed opened, her pace quickened to a trot as Victor stepped on board. Turning to face the selection panel, he depressed the hold button–not something he’d normally do, but the thought of her glaring as the doors clamped shut unsettled him.

“Thank you,” she said, stepping on board.

“Floor?”

“Twenty-three.”

“Same as me.”

The woman returned his quick smile. Auburn hair, fashionably mussed; jean jacket with upturned collar, opened to reveal a T-shirt with a rhinestone starburst stitched onto its chest; tight jeans; perfume that suffused the air with the scent of roses in an earthy-woody forest. Most certainly not a secretary or professional woman, Victor judged. Model? Actress? The frank curiosity of her pale green eyes surprised him. She was on the point of saying something, when the elevator lurched into its ascent, sending the blood rushing into Victor’s gut. He hated elevators, kept his eye on the digital floor readout to hide his discomfiture.

Why the hell did I rent an office 23 floors up? he clenched his jaw shut.

They hurtled up in silence, but he could feel those inquisitive green eyes of hers taking him in from the periphery. Who is she? Do I know her? His body elongated with the force of deceleration, the elevator jerked to a stop, the doors rumbled open. “Twenty-third,” he announced with a nervous grin.

She stepped off first, waited, walked with him down the carpeted hall. “Victor Daly?” she asked, by way of introduction. He nodded. “I’m your nine o’clock, Maria Selkirk.” When he looked surprised, she added, “I recognize you from the picture on your website.”

“Then you’ve seen my good side,” he quipped, shaking her slender hand, oddly aware of how small and cool it felt inside his own.

“Is there a bad?” she teased.

They laughed as he held open his office door.

Half an hour later he had an outline of Maria Selkirk’s petition scribbled on his legal pad. Married seven years; wealthy by any standard; one child, Aaron; husband Laurence Selkirk, high flier in the shipping and airline industries; extramarital affairs documented by a private investigator. She wanted a divorce. But Maria Selkirk wanted more. She wanted her husband out of her life.

“Based on the information you’ve given me, you could make a case for divorce with generous support payments for yourself and Aaron,” he said gingerly. “Have you thought of alternatives, though?”

“Such as?”

“Counseling?”

She frowned. “A lawyer is what I need right now, Mr. Daly,” she said.

He sighed. “I am a lawyer,” he countered, perhaps more emphatically than necessary, “and I’m offering a lawyer’s advice. The court will consider favorably any efforts you make to work things out amicably.”

“Not applicable in this case. There’s no point trying; I don’t even want to pretend to try.”

“Why?” he asked, then prodded, “A judge will be interested in your answer, too, Maria—especially if your husband’s lawyer raises the question and points out how hard he’s tried.”

“If my husband really was what he seems, a garden house philanderer, I wouldn’t be sitting here in your office, Mr. Daly,” she shot back. “I’d be trying to work things out, as you suggest. But Laurence is not who he seems. True, he shows well at cocktail parties and the theatre, displays all the tribal markings of cultured success, and he does treat people decently for appearance’s sake. But…” She faltered.

“You want sole custody,” he nudged.

“It’s difficult to explain.”

“You have to understand, the court won’t place any stock in your feelings. A judge needs very good reasons if he’s going to limit your husband’s access. In the view of the court, it’s in the best interests of the child to maintain a relationship with both parents, and that takes precedence. I’m not being personal here, please understand, but in my experience the court tends to see arguments against liberal access as vindictive…”

Is she? he wondered.

“The law is an ass!”

“And blind to boot,” he agreed. “But it’s that judge up on the bench we have to convince, Maria, and unless you have a really good case I cannot, in good faith, recommend an application for sole custody and restricted access. Have there been instances of physical abuse against you or Aaron, recklessness that could be construed as endangerment, that sort of thing?…

She stiffened, sizing him up with a frustrated glare.

Victor held his course.

“There’s no way what you have presented so far would persuade a judge to grant anything other than joint custody. In fact, an aggressive application for sole custody might undermine your own standing. We have to do what–in the court’s opinion–is best for Aaron.”

“Thank you for your time,” she said abruptly, picking up her purse and heading for the door. He moved to usher her out, but she waved him off. “I’ll find my own way,” she insisted.

Victor sighed. Maria Selkirk was beautiful, no denying it. But that didn’t explain how she’d sucked all the air out of the room, leaving him short of breath.

He scanned the lines of notes he had taken in his cramped, tidy hand. If a stranger reviewed them, what kind of conclusions might they draw about Maria Selkirk. Well heeled, unhappy and cheated in marriage, braced for the emotional wreckage of divorce. He tore his notes out of his legal pad, inserting them into a folder which he would add to the stack on his desk. ‘Selkirk, Maria,’ he printed neatly on the tab so Vanessa could file the information.

Victor wondered if he’d ever see Selkirk, Maria again.

~~~

Maria accelerated into the gravity of the False Creek basin, heading for the Burrard Bridge.

What did you expect?

How could a guy like Victor Daly help anyone in her situation? How could the creaking bureaucracy of Canada’s legal system possibly handle a crouched predator like Laurence? She needed a more robust professional on her side, someone like… well… Laurence Selkirk.

She laughed, nixing the idea with a shake of her head.

The light at Pacific winked yellow. She pulled up hard, resisting the urge to run it. But she felt vulnerable sitting there, fear clenching her gut. She checked the rear view mirror. Nothing. When the light winked green she punched the gas–a little harder than she’d intended. The SUV bucked, its tires emitting an angry chirp.

You’re a bag of nerves, girl. Laurence was getting to her, no doubt about it, and he won’t let up. Not until he gets what he wants.

And what was that?

“Not much, my dear. You, back in the lap of luxury, and my son where he belongs, not shacked up in a dingy little hovel where there’s barely enough room to swing a bat!”

Fuck you! His snide ultimatum insinuated its way into places she hadn’t realized fear could lurk. “Fuck you, you shit.”

That’s how Laurence worked – like the slow drip of an acid IV.

The cops could tap his lines and listen in for hours. They’d never pick up anything conclusive. But threats prowled beneath his satin skein of manners–like sharks beneath a perfectly calm ocean.

You’d come off looking a fool if you ever tried to pin anything on him. Or worse, like a paranoid delusive. Laurence Selkirk gave to the best charities, bought fine art, rubbed elbows with the city’s elite. Who would the world believe? One of Vancouver’s brightest, upstanding citizens, or the raving wife he’d raised from the gutter?

No contest.

Of course, if things ever went to court a different composite of Laurence Selkirk would emerge. He’d rubbed more than elbows with the wives and daughters of the city’s elite, and she could prove it. Laurence didn’t want that kind of story making the local gossip rounds. Then there was the matter of his shady ‘business’ connections. He wouldn’t want that making headlines either.

You start it and I’ll finish it, honey was her bottom line. She allowed herself a twinge of a smile. “By the time we’re through you won’t be able to get a membership into the public shitter at Main and Hastings.” At the time it felt good, putting him in his place. But a shiver of fear recurred when she remembered his hatred, his pent-up rage. It’s a dangerous game. Fear plus fury: what did that equal?

Maria tried not to think about it.

Turning right off Cornwall onto Chestnut, she headed into Kits Point. She’d rented a two-bedroom suite from a friend and sympathizer, a woman who could understand the plight of an upper class marital refugee, and who happened to harbour strong opinions on the subject of Laurence Selkirk. “Stay as long as you like,” her benefactor said. “I know you’ll be good for the rent.”

Turning left onto Ogden, she was cheered by splintered views of Kits Beach and English Bay glinting between the trees. It had been just over a month since she’d decamped from Laurence’s West Vancouver fortress, but her life with him already seemed a distant past–an illusion, a nightmare. The mansion, yacht, servants, jewelry, stultifying parties, pretentious bitches and braggart bastards… all of it existed in a parallel universe, a dimension she wanted to submerge deep within the folds of her psyche.

All except Aaron, of course. Maria forced back an urge to cry, to give in to a sudden welling of love so intense, so focused, that it hurt. Not now, she resisted, pulling up to their digs. If she walked down the sloping landscape toward Kits Beach, she would be able to see West Vancouver across English Bay. She imagined tracing the shoreline to the very point where Laurence’s ‘Taj Mahal’ sat gleaming in the sunlight.

“For you, my dear,” he’d bragged once.

“But it was built before you even met me!”

“A premonition, my love. I built it in anticipation of you.”

Like hell. Maria blushed to think she’d actually been flattered!

~~~

Just as Victor was about to dash, Vanessa buzzed. “Call for you,” she said. “Bit of an odd one,” she added, sensing his annoyance.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Said you wouldn’t want to miss him, but wouldn’t give his name.”

“I see,” Victor sighed. “Well, then, I guess I’d better not keep our mystery man waiting.” He jabbed the blinking button of Line 2. “Victor Daly here.”

“Hello Mr. Daly,” the caller responded cheerily.

Smarmy, Victor sighed. God damned salesman. “Can I help you?”

“Yes, actually. I would like to retain your services.”

“If you talk to my secretary, Ms. Kormer, she will arrange for a consultation.”

“I don’t need a consultation, Mr. Daly. I want to retain your services right away.”

“Fine, Ms. Kormer will set up an appointment and we can get right down to it,” Victor said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m on my way to court…”

“So, you’ll represent me?”

“I’ll decide once I know who you are and the particulars of your case, Mr…?”

“Selkirk.”

“Sorry?” Victor balked.

“Laurence Selkirk,” the man said with an easy familiarity that suggested Victor should have known him. “I need a family lawyer, Mr. Daly, and I understand you are the best.”

“I can’t represent you.”

“Why not?”

“Too busy. Now if you don’t mind…”

“I’ll pay whatever it takes, Mr. Daly. The matter really is quite urgent.”

“No!” Victor said firmly. “Now I have go.”

“But just a moment ago you said I could make arrangements.”

“I have to go.” Victor hung up before Selkirk could protest.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, hurrying past Vanessa’s desk.

She glanced up at him.

“Don’t ask!” He fled into the hallway.

Coincidence? Could be, he supposed—Yeah, like being hit by a piano that just sort of happened to fall out of the sky.

~~~

Most evenings Victor took Toobee – as in to pee or not to pee, with a ‘b’ substituted for the ‘p’ – for a walk and toss. Good for dog, good for master. Especially after a day like the one Victor had just endured. His consultation with Maria Selkirk and the follow-up call from her husband had set him on edge.

Toob trotted ahead, as far as the retractable leash would permit, yanking this way and that, straining so hard he had to hack every few steps because he was being choked by his collar. “You could get a harness for him,” the local pet shop clerk had advised. But Victor figured that would only make it easier for Toobee to ignore repeated commands to ‘stop pulling!’ Stop straining in lusty, sniffing pursuit of every bush, stone, hydrant and post that might reveal the scent of a rival or a mate—which meant tugging toward every bush, stone, hydrant and post beyond the reach of his master’s lead.

“Heel!” Victor barked. “Toobee! Heel!”

The dog never listened. Never learned. Scolding, pleading, treats, nothing deterred Toobee’s frantic quest, because nothing could override the dog’s yearning to procreate. “You’re neutered, god damn it! Give it up!” Victor shouted. But the phantom urge drove the poor animal to distraction. Victor had come to view it as a form of insanity, and accepted Toob for what he was: a canine sex maniac. This incurable tickle in his loins, this ever-tightening knot in his gut, it couldn’t be normal. There must be a cure!

Victor had tried obedience school. In fact, The Come, Sit, Heel Academy of Canine Manners unabashedly touted itself as the best, not to mention most expensive, canine learning experience ‘available to master and friend’. Despite all that, Toob would only come if you reeled him in; sit if you pushed down on his rump; heel if you taped him to your leg. As for the ‘mental leash’ that Ms. Chalmers, their instructor, talked about so passionately, it never materialized for Toob. No matter how often and earnestly Victor coached, the mystic mind-meld that allowed commands to be expressed in the subtlest nuances of voice and eyebrow failed to override the Toob’s insatiable instinct. A single syllable or glance would have a talented Come, Sit, Heel graduate herding sheep, leaping through hoops, dashing into burning buildings to save little children. “We never fail your dog,” the Academy bragged, its motto forming a halo round the head of a goofy looking mutt. Ms. Chalmers was not about to let Toob be the exception.

“You are simply an incorrigible master, Mr. Daly, therefore I am obliged to refund the balance of your fee and ask you not to return to classes,” she informed him in the privacy of the ‘Principal’s’ office after Toobee’s final, disastrous session. “Your dog’s behaviour is a disincentive to the other students here.” Toobee had apparently humped Ms. Chalmers’ leg once too often. The expulsion was final. No appeal.

There was only one thing in the world that obsessed Toobee more than humping, and that was tennis balls. As far as Victor could determine, there was no limit to the number of times Toob would chase down a ball and lay it at his master’s feet to be thrown again. Victor bought himself a long-handled thrower to reduce the strain on his arm and increase the ‘chase interval’. This gave him more ‘think time’ and lessened his exposure to Toob’s frantic barking—a part of the ‘fetch cycle’ as unavoidable as it was unpleasant.

The system worked. They had their routine down pat. After work, Victor would change into his sweats, grab Toob’s leash and the backpack containing thrower and tennis balls. Most days they’d head for Sunset Park, the closest off-leash zone. Sometimes they’d jog across Burrard Bridge to Kits Point and a larger slice of sand and grass near the Vancouver Maritime Museum. Victor would ‘hurl the fuzz’ until Toobee seemed tuckered out, eyes glazed, sand-coated tongue lolling out the side of his chops, chuffing like a steam engine on a steep grade. Then they’d walk home, each satisfied in his own way they’d spent some quality time.

“What’ll it be?” Victor asked after shucking his suit.

Toob stared dumbly at the dangling lead.

“Kits or Sunset? Take your pick.”

Toob barked. Twice. Kits it was. So, there they were jogging through Vanier Park, their progress interrupted by frequent sniff and piss stops.

~~~

She always left her mobile on the three-legged table in the hallway. Had come to think of it as a bomb, primed to go off, needed to get out of range whenever she could.

“Come on, buddy!” she mussed Aaron’s fine, blond hair. “Let’s get outside. Go down to the beach.”

“But I want to watch Arthur on TV!”

The program would be over in five minutes, so she gave in. While Aaron lolled on the living room sofa, watching the show with his head upside down over the edge of the cushions, she stuffed a small backpack with their beach kit. “We’ll have a picnic,” she called from the kitchen.

No answer. First Law of Child Thermodynamics: forced enthusiasm generates resistance.

“Ready?” she encouraged, switching the TV off the instant his show ended.

“Mo-om!” he wailed.

“Come on! Let’s go bud!”

Aaron’s crankiness dissipated before they reached the sidewalk on Ogden. He held her hand as they crossed the street, then took off, skimming the Maritime Museum lawn, arms angled back like the wings of a fighter jet. “Whoosh!” he yelled, curling round in an arc then zooming by Maria.

“Control tower to Aaron! Control tower to Aaron!”

“Copy control tower,” he beamed.

“Bogey at two o’clock, by the stairs down to the beach.”

“Bogey up your nose!”

“Aaron!” Maria shrieked. “Besides, it’s boogers up the nose, bogeys by the stairs. Got it?”

“Roger!” Then he was off in pursuit of imaginary enemies, screeching low over the lawn, down the wooden steps.

Maria jogged after him, tracking his erratic flight path between the beached logs and lolling sunbathers. While he carried out his imaginary mission, she found a spot, nestling her back against a curve of driftwood, settling in. A slow sigh escaped her, so deep, so relaxing, it felt as if she was breathing through her skin, sagging into the contours of warm sand like a deflating beach ball.

Forgetting his military calling, Aaron returned an engineer, intent on digging a channel down to the sea. She watched. Adoringly. Accepting the overly protective, obsessive compulsive status of Single Mom.

No, she thought. Protective with plenty of reasons. Yanked out of his familiar environment, Aaron had no friends, no favorite haunts, only a beginner’s set of toys and me. Daycare helped—at least it gave them a break from each other, and him a chance to be with playmates—but for now she was his best friend. Maria enjoyed her days with him, of course, but by late afternoon she would feel the strain of smiling and hear weariness in her own voice. That’s when she was most vulnerable.

Laurence had sniffed that out, of course.

“What the hell are you trying to prove?” he’d demanded last time they spoke.

She sometimes wondered herself.

Maria squeezed her eyes shut, as if she could blot out the ugly scenarios that threatened. Daly had been right, of course. There was no way she could legally boost Aaron out of Laurence’s orbit. On the scale of abuse, his behaviour seemed petty and paltry, certainly not the kind of stuff a family court judge would seriously rebuke. As for his philandering? So what? Maria knew that wouldn’t be grounds for anything more than a bitter division of assets, including their child…

The yapping of a particularly annoying dog interrupted her bleak calculus. The barking was so shrill, so persistent, Maria had to direct a disapproving glance toward the culprit, a Jack Russell terrier, frantically urging its master to launch a tennis ball from a plastic thrower. The man cocked, swung, and hurled the fuzzy projectile as far down the beach as he could, the momentum of his swing twisting his body round so that he faced Maria.

Christ! She laughed. Victor Daly!

Hurriedly, while his obnoxious friend galloped down the strand, he retrieved a mobile from the pocket of his sweat pants and punched in some numbers. He raised the phone to his ear, waiting for whoever he was calling to answer. Before he’d finished talking, the Jack Russell was back. The beastly mutt horked up the ball at his incompetent master’s feet and resumed its maniacal capering. Victor stooped, picked up the prize and tossed it as far as he could without the added leverage of the thrower. While the dog fetched, he talked a few more seconds, then punched the end-call button and put the phone back in his pocket.

Maria fumbled around in her backpack, retrieving the novel she had been intending to read. Quickly she opened the book and held it up in front of her face. I don’t see you; you don’t see me, she thought. Well, at least not any part of me you’d recognize.

~~~

She tapped her mobile’s screen, passing by the hall table where she’d left it: two phone messages and a text had been logged while she and Aaron were down at the beach. Later, she decided, herding him up the stairs. “Come on, mister. You need to jump into the tub.”

“Mo-om!” he protested.

“Your hair’s full of sand. And look at your feet!”

He shook his head and glanced down. “Don’t need a bath,” he sulked.

Maria sighed, ushering him into the cramped bathroom. Cracked floor tiles, old pedestal sink, antique tub. It’ll do, she figured. “We’ll gather up your favourite toys,” she said brightly. “The whole fleet.”

Sitting on the toilet seat, he allowed her to slip off his sandals and swim suit as the tub filled. She tested the water, added some bubble bath, then beckoned him to get in. Aaron stared accusingly.

“What?”

“You said I could have my toys,” he sniffed.

“Oh, for goodness sake!” She laughed, hugging him. “I’m sorry, honey. Mom’s not really with it today, is she? You jump in; I’ll go round up the navy.”

She watched him swing his leg over the side, testing the water with his toe. Aaron moved cautiously, like a nervous bird.

His toys were stored in a plastic milk crate at the foot of his bed—new crate, new toys. All his favourites were still at the Taj. There, of course, he had his own bathroom and could leave them right by the tub. Here they had to drain for an hour or so, before Maria lugged them back to his room. A minor inconvenience. Aaron never complained about it. Nor had he objected to the more spectacular loss of a heated pool, where naval campaigns could be waged on a truly epic scale.

Maria hefted the milk crate and headed back to the bathroom. Passing the stairs, she remembered her mobile, waiting in the hallway below. Out of sight, out of mind, she thought, brushing off the memory of its glaring summons. It haunted her, an inflammation at the periphery of consciousness.

Back in the bathroom, she submerged the milk crate into the tub like a crab trap.

“Here you go,” she said.

Rummaging through his collection, Aaron pulled out a Playmobil Zodiac. Patiently, he recovered the diver that went with it; a rescue helicopter, along with its pilot; and, of course, the victims of whatever disaster he planned. Certain she had faded from his radar, Maria slipped quietly away, then headed for the kitchen, grabbing her mobile on the way.

First, a coffee, she insisted. Or herbal tea… chamomile, perhaps. Absently, she put the kettle on and waited. Would he call again? Should she answer? Questions dogged her, remorseless as the pull of gravity.

The kettle shrilled. Startled, Maria busied herself tearing open a tea packet, inserting it into her favourite mug—Tea (n.) a hug in a cup, it hadprinted on its porcelain curvature. She poured in the boiling water.

Still, the red light glared, become a beacon on the verge of infinity. Upstairs, Aaron vroomed round the tub in his Zodiac, the chopper whump-whumping overhead… sounds that reached her from what seemed a great distance, almost another dimension, as if he’d already become part of her past.

“Shit!” She snatched her mobile up, punched the message button.

“Prick!”

“You have two new messages; first new message,” the device responded,…

“Hi Mar!” Cathy Vermeer chatted. “How about a snort of Starbucks to start off the day tomorrow. Nothing too early. Maybe elevenish. A working girl needs to catch up on her beauty sleep come the weekend, you know.”

Maria shook her head, smiling. Sure, Cath, she agreed.

“Second new message…”

“Hello, Ms. Selkirk?”

Caught off guard, Maria was annoyed to find herself smiling at Victor Daly’s bumbling introduction. He sounded nervous, klutzy.

“Something’s come up that we need to talk about,” he was saying…

Suddenly a dog’s frantic barking and whining interrupted, intensifying when—as she recalled—Victor Daly bent down to pick up the ball. “Quiet Toob,” he commanded, to no effect. Then the distracting antics of his unruly mutt faded into the background as ‘Toob’ took off after his inanimate prey.

“Could you please call me?” Victor completed his message hurriedly. “Tonight, if possible.”

What could he possibly want? From their consultation she’d assumed there wasn’t much he could do for her, a state of affairs made clear by her abrupt exit that morning.

Maybe the call isn’t about legal stuff? She dismissed the notion. That would be unprofessional, wouldn’t it? Victor Daly didn’t strike her as the type who would let down his guard for a second—not even after hours, wearing sweats, walking on Kits beach with his stupid dog.

“Blam!” Aaron exploded, sloshing water over the rim of the tub.

”Hey! Ease up on the tsunamis, buddy,” she yelled.

Daly didn’t have kids. She would have bet on it. She punched his number at the top of her Recents list, conjuring up what kind of setting a man like him would inhabit while she waited for him to answer. Modern, probably. Elegant but minimalist. Lots of space around sleek designer furniture. Contemporary art on immaculate white walls…

“Hello?”

“Hello, Mr. Daly. It’s Maria Selkirk.”

“Oh! Thank you, Maria.” He paused for a second, uncertain.

“What is it?”

“Well, I had an unusual conversation this afternoon, after you left.”

Why is he so edgy?

“It’s placed me in a bit of a quandary, really, but I think you need to know about it. At two o’clock I received a call from your husband…”

“From Laurence?”

“He wanted to retain my services; said he would pay whatever I asked.”

“What!” Maria tensed, her voice become shrill as the squawk of a startled gull.

“Normally I wouldn’t share this kind of information, of course. But the circumstances seemed so strange, I felt you should know. I declined his offer, of course, because it would have placed me in a conflict…”

“But I’m not your client!”

“Technically, no. But your name is on a file in my office and let’s just say we haven’t yet decided how to proceed after our initial consultation. Call me when you’ve had a chance to think things through.”

“Thank you, Mr. Daly,” she said, ending the call.

Maria sat moribund as the implications of his tip-off took root, permeating the thinking flesh, a virulent, slithering disease. Get over it, girl, she commanded. Get angry… really angry!

~~~

Cathy insisted on buying, so Maria ordered a plain coffee, nothing on the side. A photo tech at London Drugs, Cathy didn’t earn a lot: enough for an attic suite on Kits slope and annual trips to Europe, Asia and, in the coming year, Africa. “Who needs anything more?”she thought.

Who indeed?

She queued at the pick-up counter. No missing her, that’s for sure, Maria thought. Pink track suit with blue stripes down the legs and sleeves, an outfit that complemented her plumpness; black hair tied back in a long ponytail; bright red nails that scurried and swarmed about her person like ladybugs; thick glasses in a heavy black frame that always slipped slightly askew on her pudgy nose; pallid, coarse complexion—Laurence had asked pointedly on more than one occasion why Maria insisted on staying friends with Cathy.

“Because I like her,” she’d answered.

“Why?”

“Because she doesn’t give a damn what you and your snobby friends think.”

“I got you a latte,” Cathy announced, plunking their cups down on the table. “And a strawberry-rhubarb turnover.”

“But I only wanted coffee!”

“Tough!” Cathy pulled up the chair opposite. “I’m going to fatten you up yet. You just wait and see.” She extracted one of the turnovers from its paper bag, her ladybug fingers converging as if it were some form of prey being pulled out of its cocoon. She placed it on the table in front of Maria, using the bag as a plate. “So, tell me about this lawyer guy,” she said. Maria had mentioned Victor briefly, accepting Cath’s invitation to coffee. She hadn’t mentioned the call he’d received from Laurence; Cathy tended to overreact.

“Not much to tell, really. He’s a bit of an odd duck.”

“Well, let’s start there. Your life’s so much more interesting than the soaps or reality TV, Mar. Don’t deny me my Saturday morning fix.”

Maria described her first encounter with Victor in the elevator. “He was petrified,” she said. “Like a man standing in front of a firing squad.”

“Vertigo?” Cathy ventured.

Maria shrugged.

“Maybe it was something else entirely,” Cathy teased. “Maybe he’s one of those guys who can’t get enough oxygen when they’re confined with a sexy fellow passenger in a small space.”

“Are you blaming me?” Maria laughed.

“Oh, if you only knew, my dear, you would blush.”

Cathy bit into her turnover and chewed hard, scrunching her eyes up in delight.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Maria scoffed. “Elevator sex is just the latest figment of your overactive imagination.”

“You like this guy?”

“Cathy!”

“You do, don’t you?”

Maria rolled her eyes, clamped her jaw shut.

“So, is he going to represent you in Beauty versus The Beast?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Why not?”

It was complicated, that part. Maria had gone over the question herself a hundred times. There was the money, of course. But money problems had a way of sorting themselves out. Then there was Victor’s lecture on the merits of reconciliation—although that was almost certainly boilerplate from some textbook on how to be a good divorce lawyer. Besides, his perspective on that score might have changed a little since Laurence’s brash call.

If he only knew.

“Ahem!” Cathy prompted.

“He doesn’t think I’d stand a chance of getting sole custody or restricted access,” Maria said. “Not based on what I told him.”

“What didn’t you tell him, Mar? That you need the kind of lawyer who sticks up for mothers instead of rich pricks?”

“Cath!”

“Well, it makes me mad.”

The frame of her glasses accentuated Cathy’s scowl. If Victor had been present, he might have been treated to a cup of hot latte in his lap. “He doesn’t strike me as the kind who sees the law as a blood sport, is what I’m trying to say,” she sighed patiently. “And—in fairness —I didn’t give him the whole story. He’s only got the edited version. If he knew the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, he might not have been so… solicitous.”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell him!” Cathy’s outburst drew glances from nearby tables.

“It’s complicated,” Maria hushed. “And irrelevant. Nothing’s proven, Cath; I’m not even sure the stuff I have, over and above the chronic philandering, would be admissible.”

That shut Cathy up. Not even she knew the full story—the true nature of Laurence Selkirk—but she knew enough to respect Maria’s warning. Cathy bit off another chunk of turnover and chewed savagely.

“Do you ever watch nature shows, Cath?”

Still chewing, Cathy nodded.

“I watch them sometimes. I’m thinking now of tigers. They’re so beautiful, gorgeous really, right up to the moment they jump out of the bushes and grab you by the neck. That’s Laurence. He’s waiting. I know every second of every day that he’s crouching in the tall grass waiting for that triggering instant.”

Cathy frowned helplessly.

“Anything could set him off. He might sense that he can beat me; then again, he might get scared he’s going to lose. Either way, he’s going to make a move sooner or later, and I’m nowhere near ready… How’s that for reality TV?”

“Pretty crappy.”

“Then let’s switch channels, hon.”

~~~

Hello Dearest,

I really do think we need to work things out, don’t you? It’s not right that Aaron doesn’t get to see his father, and I don’t get to see my son. That surely cannot be good for either him or me.

I suggest you and I meet at a neutral location and begin working out a mutually agreeable settlement in the best interests of our son. As you know I have ample means to fulfilll any reasonable support commitments made in good faith. I also appreciate that Aaron will want to continue a loving relationship with both his parents. Indeed, I think it would be best if we stayed together as a family, but the two of us would have to agree to that. 

Since you haven’t responded constructively to previous phone calls and emails, I am taking the unusual step of having this message hand delivered, not as registered mail, but certainly as a precursor to legal action. If you continue to ignore attempts at reconciliation or settlement, I shall have to explore more effective options to bring you to reason. I have avoided doing so for Aaron’s and our sakes, because I don’t believe a messy confrontation would be in anyone’s interests. I can assure you, however, there is nothing that will prevent me from having a close relationship with my son and fulfilling my obligations as a loving father. 

Sincerely, Laurence.

The note was taped to the front door when she got home from coffee with Cathy. She wondered who’d helped him write it. Some sleaze-bag lawyer got up in a suit with four buttons on the sleeves no doubt. Probably someone she’d met at the Taj sipping scotch and eying her appreciatively from a distance—the same way you’d admire anything with ‘PROPERTY OF SELKIRK SHIPPING’ stenciled all over it.

She cast back to the last few parties at the Taj. There had been a legal up and comer on the invitation list recently. Stan something or other. Maybe it was him. It was unthinkable that Laurence had crafted the missive himself.

“Messy confrontation,” Maria mused. “Now what did that mean?” Messy was such a versatile word. Messy as in mussed hair, disorganized room, complicated divorce, or…

COUPLE DIE IN WHALLEY BUNGALOW FIRE

The charred remains of a man and a woman have been found in the burned out remains of a Surrey bungalow. Firefighters made the grisly discovery after battling a three-alarm blaze through the night. Police are treating the fire as suspicious and the deaths as possible homicides…

“Messy,” Maria grimaced.

It turned out the victims had both worked for Selkirk Shipping, she in the Surrey warehouse, he as a container truck driver. When she’d asked him about it, Laurence said, “Honey, I’ve got hundreds of people working for me, thousands, actually, if you count contractors and service providers. Not all of them are fine upstanding citizens, much as I’d like them to be. Some are screw-ups.”

He’d said this with what seemed a threatening death’s head grin.

Later reports portrayed the couple as being ‘known to police’, ‘involved in the drug trade’, and ‘connected to organized crime’. “None of my business,” Laurence shrugged when she asked him about it…

Her mobile went off. Maria jumped inside her skin, picked it up, sighing. “Hi” she said brightly.

“Just thought I’d let you know I had some visitors this morning,” Cathy quavered, her voice cold with fury.

“What’s wrong?”

“Somebody broke into my place while we were sipping our lattes. They totally trashed it. I mean totally! Slashed and smashed everything.”

“Oh, Cath!” Maria groaned. “I’ll be right over.”

“What about Aaron?”

“He’s still with his sitter…”

Fear tightened Maria’s gut. Is he?  Could she say for certain Aaron was where she thought he should be? “I’ll call and let her know I’m gonna be late, Cath, then be right over. Okay?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

~~~

The intercom buzzed, penetrating from somewhere beyond consciousness. Victor’s eyes blinked open. Nothing. Dreaming darkness morphed seamlessly into utter, waking darkness… darkness before light… the crushing darkness of the Marianas Trench, ten kilometres beneath the rumpled surface of an ocean.

Don’t panic.

If you panicked, the inexorable pressure would crush you. If you allowed fear to take hold, you would be well and truly dead.

He breathed. Perhaps he could let go, allow himself to float free and drift up into the twilight zone where normal consciousness was at least possible. Light seeped in through seams around the closet doors. Toobee erupted, barking like a maniac from somewhere beyond the bedroom. Is that what woke me?

Victor groaned, propping himself on his elbow. The intercom squawked again, its shrill command buzzing inside his head, behind his eyes.

“Shit!” It was Larry. They were going to play roller-hockey in the parking lot at Sunset Beach, then balance their Karma with a greasy spoon breakfast—their usual Saturday routine. And after that, his meeting with Rick and Pauline to debrief from their shoot the night before.

Fully awake, a new panic took hold. What’s on the other side? Was Pauline still asleep in his bed? More than once he’d found her slumbering amid the tangled sheets. If that were the case, she’d want to hide out until they’d left to do their boy-thing, then make a discreet exit. Victor eased the mirror-door open a crack, peeking out into the bedroom. No one.

He struggled to his feet, emerging into the light of day, stumbling down the hall, jabbing the intercom button on his way by.

“Hi, Larry,” he said.

“Did I spoil your beauty sleep, man?”

“Come on up.”

Victor pushed the lobby door release, then headed for the bathroom. Leaning against the sink, he examined himself in the mirror. “You look like shit,” he grumbled, splashing cold water on his face, brushing his teeth, taking a piss.

“Hey!” Larry shouted, rapping on the door. “How you doing, beauty boy?”

“There’s coffee brewed if you want.”

Victor silently thanked the technology gods for automatic coffee makers.

“We might miss the first period.”

“But won’t be missed, eh?” Larry joked.

True. They were the worst players, invariably chosen last and given defensive assignments. What Victor really wanted was to play goal, but one of the supposed benefits of roller-hockey was fitness, so he stayed out, doing his best to impede the showy skating and stick-handling displays put on by the younger, more talented players.

Younger! Christ, you’re only 35, man. Not even middle-aged. There were lots of older guys in the NHL. He stepped into the shower, sluicing away his anxious thoughts under its jets of scalding water.

Then, out of nowhere, he remembered Maria Selkirk. Her face materialized, a hologram of hope and desire. Victor blushed. What are you thinking? Look at your life, man!

But, what the hell, he’d give her a call anyway. After all, they did have business to conclude. Is she my client, or isn’t she? They needed to get that straight, no? And after the mysterious call from Laurence Selkirk, he really did want to take her on.

He frowned. How often would he gird himself for the role of White Knight? When would he learn there are two sides to every story—even the messiest, ugliest, most scandalous stories you could imagine?

~~~

Maria couldn’t make sense of it. “I’m so sorry,” she commiserated, standing in the middle of what had been Cathy’s living room, but now looked like the aftermath of a terrorist attack.

“It’s not your fault,” Cathy consoled. “But if you get a chance to stick a shiv between that bastard’s ribs, I’d be ever so grateful.”

“What did the cops say?”

“That they’d do their best, advised me to get a double deadbolt and an alarm system, blah, blah, blah…”

“I mean about Laurence.”

“Subject didn’t come up.”

“Oh?”

Cathy shrugged, slumped on her slashed sofa, tufts of padding hanging out of it.

“Cops didn’t ask if there was some reason for all this? A motive?” Maria gestured at the spray-bombed walls.

Again, Cathy shrugged. Then she grinned. “I told the handsome young officer that I could only wish for a lover half so crazy-jealous.”

They laughed.

“You’ve got insurance?” Maria asked hopefully.

“Yeah, I’m covered. Hey, he’s really done me a favour when I think about it. A couple of hundred bucks for the deductible and I get to do an extreme makeover of this dump. Maybe I should send the prick a thank you card.”

Maria smiled politely. “Aaron can stay with his sitter a couple of hours more. Come on girl, let’s get out of here.”

“Wait!” Cathy bolted from the sofa, grabbing her mobile from the end table. “For the record,” she said, taking photos of the carnage. “For insurance purposes,” she explained.

Click, click, click. Living room, bedroom, kitchen, she took photos and videos, crouching and rotating as if she were performing a choreographed, slow-motion dance.

“Done?” Maria asked, impatiently.

“Almost.”

But then Cathy began taking close-ups. Click: photos of the spray-bombed graffiti.

None of the tags actually resolved into words. “The medium is the message,” Cathy quipped when Maria pointed that out. “The message being: This is a warning, like blood sprayed on a crime scene wall. No words, no names, but you know what it means and who it’s from.“

Click. Photos of the sofa slashes; individual sheets of paper flung about the room; mangled books; articles of clothing, sprawled on the bedroom floor; smears of jam spilled from jars in the kitchen…

“Come on!” Maria complained.

“I’m witnessing,” Cathy pleaded. “It’s part of my restorative process.”

“How much longer is your healing session going to take?”

“Oh, just a lifetime.”

~~~

“So, how was it?” Rick asked.

Is he being ironic or obtuse? Victor scrutinized the actor, looking for signs of intelligent life behind Rick’s pale blue eyes. Pauline sipped her coffee, awaiting developments. She sometimes slipped into the observer role during planning and debriefing sessions—until her interests were affected. Then she’d perk up with the demeanour of a grouchy cat.

“It was okay,” Victor said, turning back to Rick. “But I want the action to be… um… more emphatic from your point of view. Just slightly, in a nuanced way, but with enough edge that the audience will recognize you’re putting on a bit of a show.”

Clumsily put, Victor thought, wincing. But this is uncharted territory.

Pauline raised her eyebrows. Apparently she found the suggestion surprising. “You mean you want them to see through the role? Aren’t we trying to create an illusion here, an alternative reality—and that’s the key word, isn’t it, reality? Now you’re saying you want the audience to know we’re acting.”

She swept a strand of glistening black hair away from her face, glancing round the coffee bar to see if anyone had noticed. To Victor the gesture seemed natural, elegant as a long-legged bird preening at the edge of a lake. But only someone like Pauline could get away with it. She fixed him with that shocking stare of hers—that perpetual look of aggressive innocence.

Funny word, innocence. Pauline had taught him itwas not synonymous with naivety. They were quite distinct qualities. Radical innocence could be austere and knowing. If there was a woman in the world he could worship, it would be Pauline. She came as close to the definition of goddess as you could get without religion. But sometimes her aura seemed too permissive, almost promiscuous. He couldn’t prevent a primal surge, and she saw right through him, the verboten knowledge turning up the corners of her lips. He pulled up his chair, stared – he hoped with flinty eyes—then sipped his coffee until he was sure he’d made his point.

“You’re not quite understanding me, Paul,” he continued in his calm, assuring voice. “I don’t want the audience to see through Rick’s role; I want them to sense his aroused spirit. He’s putting on a show for you, not them.”

“Ooh,” she batted her eyelashes. “Sounds macho.”

“I kind of like it,” Rick joked.

“It’s not meant to be macho.” Victor struggled. “It’s like a songbird sitting on the highest branch, straining to get the notes just right. It’s all part of a natural act that predates social and cultural convention. Evolution without the trimmings. I want us to capture that subtle instance of excitement, anticipation…”

“Oh, give me a break! And you quit smirking!” Pauline turned on Rick, who raised his hands in mock surrender. “You just want something that titillates the peacock-ego.”

Rick grinned—his turn to await developments.

“Trust me, Pauline. Can you do that?” Victor implored.

She stared back, hard.

“Okay,” she said at last. “But if this strays into the cheesy zone, I’m gone. Handsome here may be happy to put on a muscle shirt and tight jeans for the fashion photographers; I’ve got my vision as a serious actress/dancer to think about. This project has to stay tight within the lens of Artistic with a capital A. If it isn’t an activist statement on the beauty of naked, sexual humanity, I don’t want any part of it.”

“Of course,” Victor agreed. “It’s a collaboration. It doesn’t go anywhere unless we’re all happy. You know that.”

So much for the payer calling the tune. At $500 each per session you’d think she’d cut me a little artistic slack, Victor thought. Not Pauline. And a deal was a deal: the models viewed every shot, selection was by consensus, unused images were deleted. Permanently.

She doesn’t need me; I need her, Victor reminded himself.

Well, perhaps things weren’t that cut and dried. Even goddesses had to vie for recognition in the performing arts world. And that’s what Victor offered, a memorable hit. Pauline knew from his previous shows—from the photo gallery that was his apartment—what he brought to the table.

But you ain’t seen nothing yet, he figured. This next show will be… Monumental!. Controversial too, of course, drawing the usual calls for censorship and charges under Canada’s prudish obscenity laws, or failing that, even more prudish laws…

All of which falls within Pauline’s brand.

The right kind of notoriety could be a career-booster for an up-and-coming alternative thespian. It might bounce differently for a family court lawyer, though.

“You’re fucking crazy,” was how Larry put it. “You’ll end up disbarred!”

Inside Out. Victor smiled at the title. For the audience, it would seem the exact opposite. The viewers—participants in Victor’s lexicon—would travel from the outside in, entering a waking dream.

He envisioned two exhibition spaces. In the ‘antechamber’ erotic studies of Pauline and Rick would be mounted on the walls. A video in the reorientation zone would zoom in on their lovers’ dance, but so close the shifting landscapes of flesh and hair would become almost unrecognizable. It would create the sensation of flying over a living topography, exploring its forbidden contours.

From there, the participants would enter a forest of banners suspended from the studio ceiling. They would move like feral creatures, pushing through underbrush. A soundscape of wind chimes, rain, the murmur of conversation in public places, rush hour traffic, occasional snatches of pastoral music would engulf them. Scents of musk, lavender, second-hand smoke… he hadn’t figured it all out yet… would permeate consciousness.

Then came the sanctum sanctorum, the inner chamber. It made him a bit squeamish just thinking about it. He knew he was onto something potentially good. No sense going where you’ve already been, was how he put it. Got to push beyond… Push until elasticity is stretched to the limit, until it becomes transparent, the taut molecules of its skin on the point of tearing open to a new vision.

~~~

Maria cut the call and slipped the phone back into her hip pocket as soon as she recognized Laurence’s name flashed on the screen. Her gut cramped. What’s next? A bomb under the seat of her SUV? A hit-man? Kidnap Aaron? She could feel his energy, an electro-magnetic pulse throbbing inside her skull.

Fucking terrorist!

She carried on into the kitchen where she clattered about, putting the kettle on. “Herbal or regular?” she called over her shoulder.

“Gunpowder, please,” Cathy answered from the living room.

How long until he launches a direct assault, Maria wondered. She pictured him stumping around Taj Mahal, consumed with rage. Pathetic, really.

“So, when are you going to answer it?” Cathy startled her from the kitchen door.

“Huh?”

“Your phone. Stop playing dumb.”

Maria tossed a teabag into her new polka-dot pot, focused on the kettle, waited for it to shrill.

“You really want to hear him gloating?” she asked, her back still turned to Cathy.

“Who?”

Maria didn’t bother answering.

“It might not be him?” Cathy probed… “Well, okay, so it’s him. You’ve got to answer sometime, right?”

Maria wondered if she could survive close quarters with Cathy Vermeer, even for a few days. What was all that weird stuff with the camera at her place, anyway? But Cathy had a point. The phone needed answering.

Turning brusquely, Maria brushed past, into the dining room. She perched rigidly on one of the hardback chairs, punched the voicemail icon at the bottom of her iPhone screen, then the one to retrieve her messages.

“You have two new messages. First new message…”

“Hello Maria,” Victor Daly said. “Just following up. I normally don’t push, but I’d really like to meet with you. Call it an extended consultation… over dinner, perhaps? Can you give me a call?”

Flummoxed, she hit the End Call button.

“Extended consultation,” Cathy mimicked dreamily.

“Shut up!” Maria groused, half jokingly. “We’re still trying to figure out if he’s going to represent me…”

“Represent you? Come on, Mar. Am I just jealous, or are you being wilfully naive?”

“Why don’t you go watch the tea steep?”

Maria sulked a second or two, then surrendered under the pressure of Cathy’s unflinching gaze. “Okay, I like him a bit… maybe more than a bit. But I’m a married woman, remember?” She let the objection sink in. “Whose husband hires thugs to trash her best friend’s apartment. About the stupidest thing I could do right now would be to act on a romantic impulse, eh? With the guy who might be my lawyer, duh?”

“Ouch!” Cathy squawked.

“Besides, I’m not sure about Victor.”

“What’s not to be sure about?”

Maria had to think that through. “He likes me, Cath. There’s that gravity between us. But he’s aloof. It’s like part of him wants to fall in love; another part is pulling back. Violently, almost. He’s confused, Cathy. I get the feeling he’s got secrets, and this tension between giving in and holding back is going to tear something open. Does that make sense?”

“Confused about what? His sexuality?”

That hadn’t occurred to Maria.

“Well, much as I like the company of gay men, I can tell you he’s not,” Cathy pronounced.

“You’ve never met him!”

“I know, honey,” Cathy teased, “but the notion just doesn’t fit my movie. Seriously. From what you’ve said, I don’t think he’s gay—not even in his closet. Weird, maybe, but since when did sexual politics follow Robert’s Rules of Order?”

“Sexual politics?”

“Don’t play the puppy with me. Sex and politics are like bone and muscle, baby, and you know it.”

“You’re weird sometimes. Did you know that?”

“Thanks, hon. Thought you’d never notice.”

Sighing, Maria jabbed the icon to reopen her voicemail. “Last time you entered you left with one unplayed message,” it informed her. Maria punched number one, bypassing the announcement..

“Hello, my dear. Just following up on my letter,” Laurence said chattily. “Please do respond… Oh! And I thought perhaps you might like your apartment smartened up, even if you’re not planning on making it your final resting place. I know of an interior decorating crew that will make it ‘Spiffy in a Jiffy’—that’s their motto. Bye for now!”

~~~

“A lawyer who works weekends. Commendable!”

“Piss off.”

“Who invites prospective clients out to dinner.”

“Give it a rest, Larry!”

Not likely, Victor thought. This was too good for Larry to let go of. Still, Victor was glad he’d told his best friend about his predicament. Larry might be a pain in the butt, but there was usually a subtext of reasoned advice to his joking.

“Who, no doubt, will make house calls eventually.”

Enough already! Victor flicked a cashew at his tormentor, hitting him smack on the forehead. The nut bounced into Larry’s beer.

“Ow!” he complained. “Now look what you’ve done!” He peered into his glass, staring at the offending nut as if it was a severed toe. “This is an import, too,” he held it up indignantly.

“Get over it.”

Larry sipped at his beer, eying the cashew, which seemed to be dissolving. “So, you really like her?” he said.

Victor nodded.

“Then, why so glum?”

“I haven’t felt like this since high school, Larry. I mean, this threatens everything.”

“Oh-oh.”

“A couple of days ago life was normal…”

Larry raised his eyebrows.

“Okay. So maybe I’ve got a few kinks in the old DNA that make my normal a bit ‘ab’. But I don’t have any heads in my freezer or anything like that. I take pictures some people consider naughty; I sleepwalk into closets; I play roller-hockey in a gay & bi pick-up league…”

Larry raised his eyebrows, smirking.

“And your point is?”

“My point is: I like my life, Larry. I’ve got a great job, the best apartment in all Vancouver, occasional and very enjoyable sex, friends who are weird enough to be wonderful without being dangerous—present company most certainly included—all the time and money I need to pursue my art, and a dog to remind me how much I don’t want kids.

“Who could ask for more?”

Larry shrugged.

“But when I look at Maria, man, I want her. Not just that way. I want her in my life. I hardly know the woman. She’s got a kid. And a husband who might be more bloodthirsty than Dracula, for Christ’s sake. But I want her. Does that make any sense? Tell me it’s crazy!”

“It’s crazy,” Larry agreed. “But you know what?”

“What?”

“I envy you, man.” He held up his glass. “To the real thing!” he toasted, swigging what remained of his ale, then sucking up the errant cashew appreciatively.

~~~

A target mannequin propped on a bench about twenty metres away would have to do for now. You could just make it out in the dark, but if it had been a real person, with a real face, you wouldn’t have been able to recognize who she was… you’d have to know who you were aiming at beforehand. That means she won’t be able to ID you either.

Laurence tried to imagine Maria there, instead of the dummy, but couldn’t conjure an image of his wife. So he had to make do with the vague, formless ghost which, in a way, made his hatred pure.

He raised the rifle, took aim, squeezed. Pop, pop, pop! Three balls whizzed out the barrel. Smack, smack, smack! All on target.

“So, it’ll work okay,” he said. “Even in the dark?”

“Yeah,” his bodyguard confirmed. “As long as we can get to within 30 or 40 yards of her.”

Laurence nodded curtly. They walked over to the mannequin, examining the spattered hits. “Good cluster. Every one of ‘em on target, exactly where I aimed.”

“Yep,” his bodyguard confirmed.

The appreciative acknowledgment sounded forced, which made it all the more pleasing.

“We’re on, then,” Laurence decided.

~~~

Out of the way. Pricey enough to keep the fast-food crowd at bay. Nice view. A chef with a name. Victor was pleased with his choice of restaurant for their meeting: The Fish House in Stanley Park.

And it is a meeting, he reminded himself. As long as he kept things in that frame he would enjoy Maria’s company without getting drawn into some sort of clumsy tango.

Easily said, he confessed, taken in by the exquisite geometry of her neck, her electrifying green eyes, the curl of her slender fingers around her wine glass, the serene invitation of her smile, the lustre of her fine auburn hair… everything about her excited, fascinated, aroused. And her voice! Confident, melodic, soothing…

She laughed.

Get a grip, Daly!   

“What?” he said, nonplussed.

“Where to from here?”

She reads me like a book.

Could you say ‘You’re beautiful’ to a client? It would be so much simpler if you could just be honest, forthright: Good point. Great  concept. That’s a plan. And by the way, you’re beautiful…

“How’s your meal?” Victor asked.

Maria had chosen a mixed seafood grill.

“Delicious.” She took a sip of her wine—a light-bodied red. “I take it you’re something of a connoisseur.”

“Oh?”

“No ordinary mortal smiles over his meals the way you do.” Maria teased.

He grabbed his own glass for a quick slurp. Back to business, Daly.

Laurence Selkirk probably had a personal chef. Dinner in Stanley Park wasn’t such a big deal for Maria even though, in her present circumstance, she probably couldn’t afford to share the bill… not that he would have let her.

“So how did you meet him?” He straightened up in his chair.

She glanced out the window, into the gathering dusk. “I did some work for an organization called The Street Level Society. They help people get their lives together, and advocate for services on behalf of the homeless. It’s a radical group in some ways. I mean, imagine asking for more funding to open up shelters, lobbying for a guaranteed income. I still catch glimpses of my former colleagues on the evening news, usually waving placards and chanting at protest rallies. Anyway, back then they thought they could make some headway in the boardrooms of B.C., so they hired me as their ‘ambassador to business’. I had the right look, I guess.

“Selkirk Shipping was one of my cold calls, and I always went for the top. Laurence asked me out to dinner; donated ten grand over dessert.”

Victor looked surprised.

“He wasn’t the first to mix business with pleasure… or the last.”

Victor didn’t squirm.

“Besides, I didn’t consider his tactics inappropriate. Where I was coming from, people demanded a lot more for a lot less. I was never much of an activist, myself. Just a girl who had been down on her luck and wanted to give back to the people who’d helped her. I suppose I was the poster girl for the cause—someone The Street Level Society had actually saved from the indecencies of prostitution and drug abuse…”

“You were…?” He let the question trail off.

“Yeah, I guess so. Just long enough to scare the crap out of myself. I was the one-in-a-thousand who had enough shreds of self-respect left to really want some sort of salvation. And once they cleaned me up, I showed well: young, attractive, articulate—just what the Street Level Society needed to make themselves salable to the right kind of people, the ones who actually had some money.

“I played the role well. My looks, my story, a flirtatious nuance, they were all part of the gig. So Laurence propositioning me in his own terms didn’t come as a big surprise. I persuaded him to double his initial investment before I agreed to another date. I know it sounds crude, but I was speaking his language. He liked it….

“There’s a fine line between salacious and sophisticated, you understand? I keep just to the right side of it.”

“And now?”

“I’m not playing you, if that’s what you mean.”

They laughed.

“You’re a fascinating client,” he raised his glass, tilting it in her direction.

She acknowledged the toast with the slightest inclination of her head.

“Funny thing is, he figures he’s the one who raised me up from the gutter. That I owe him for my subsequent life of luxury and didn’t bring anything of value to the table, except a rough-cut beauty he could transform into the gem I’ve become.”

She smiled prettily.

Victor looked puzzled.

“He’s an absolute narcissist, you see. Laurence thinks he’s responsible for the success of everyone and everything within his sphere of influence; that as the creator, he’s also the owner of his ‘people’. That’s what galls him most about me and Aaron leaving, the fact that I absconded with two of his prize possessions—me and his son. His son, I have to emphasize.”

“Are you saying he feels he has a right to have you back as well as Aaron?”

Maria stabbed a prawn with her fork. “Are you serious about taking me on as a client?”

“Wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.”

He let that sink in for a few seconds.

“During our consultation you said Laurence is not what he seems. What did you mean by that? Has he threatened you?”

Carefully, she put her fork down. “Let’s put it this way,” she began, her voice level, controlled. “There are things I wouldn’t raise in court, Victor. Not if I value my life. The only reason Laurence hasn’t taken back what he believes is rightfully his is because of what I know—and because of some very incriminating evidence I could use to back me up, locked away in a very safe place. If he ever figures I’m actually going to use that stuff…”

“What stuff?”

“It’s a delicate dance, Victor, on the edge of a very high cliff. Sure you want to go there?”

“Yes!”

“I have a friend, Cathy,” she continued. “I met her through The Street Level Society, actually. She was the volunteer worker who first reached out to me when I was in the dumps. We went out for a coffee Saturday morning. While we were having our girl talk her place was trashed. Somebody broke in and spray bombed everything in sight, slashed all her furniture, turned her drawers upside down. This wasn’t the work of amateurs. It was carried out in broad daylight. Nobody heard or saw anything. These guys knew what they were doing.”

Victor didn’t flinch.

“I’m radioactive, Mr. Daly. Anyone who gets too close gets burned.” She fixed him with her own unflinching gaze. “Do you want me to go on?”

“Yes.”

“My husband is a criminal. Big time.” She leaned closer over the table, lowering her voice to an emphatic whisper. “He’s got connections to organized crime. I’m certain he’s had people ‘offed’, and don’t doubt for a second he would have me fitted with a body bag if he could get away with it. 

“If he ever thinks I’m going to go public with what I know, he will kill me.

“Period.”

“Go on.”

“This stuff has a shelf life. It’s only a matter of time until Laurence forces a resolution, if you know what I mean?”

“This does complicate things,” he admitted.

“Still want me as a client?”

“More than ever. Pro bono.”

He resisted the impulse to reach across the table and take her hand. Looked out the window instead, letting a vague sense of complicity permeate his thoughts as he studied her face, mirrored in the window beside them. It was illuminated by the glow of restaurant lighting, floating against a backdrop that bled into darkness.

“Besides,” he added, his mind made up, “you’re not the only one with back story. Would you like to see the dessert menu?”

~~~

Figures lurked in the darkness, shadows seeking shadows. They made Maria uneasy, but she pushed through, not wanting the subterfuge of other Stanley Park trysts to interfere with precarious state of contentment she and Victor seemed to have achieved. It had been too long since she’d heard herself laugh like she did with him. She liked it. A little more than friendship allowed. I want to stretch this moment.

What if he takes my hand. Would she flinch? Don’t be stupid. You only met the guy a few days ago… a weirdo in an elevator.

“I’m feeling a little cheated,” she complained.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I blabbed all night about the shady details of my life with Laurence, not to mention my promiscuous life before Laurence, and you sat there like a sphinx the whole time, taking it all in. I thought you were going to balance things a little by revealing some of your dark history.”

“Fair enough,” he laughed.

“Well,” she nudged.

“Well, it’s not so easy for me, is it? I mean, compared to yours, my life is pretty boring.”

“So bore me.”

“I don’t know where to begin.”

She sighed. “How about we start from the very beginning: where were you born?”

“Don’t know.”

“Oh, come on,” she hooted, slapping him playfully on the arm.

“Seriously. I’m adopted. I don’t know how I was conceived, or where I was born, or exactly when.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“My adoptive Mom and Dad are teachers. I grew up in East Van steeped in socialist theory and the liberal arts.”

“Wow! Have you ever tried to find your birth parents?”

“Nope. Richard and Nora are my parents as far as I’m concerned. I don’t have their DNA in my pedigree, but odds are I wouldn’t like the genetic profile of my bio-folks anyway. Best leave some stones unturned. That’s how I see it.”

She sensed irritation, taut nerves being plucked. But Maria couldn’t let go. Duty bound, she thought later. Friends push into no-go zones, open sick-room doors. He’ll just have to put up with my snooping.

“My friend Cathy is adopted,” she said. “You’ll have to meet her…”

Oops! Another boundary crossed.

“She signed up on some kind of registry, and so did her birth mother. They met last year; it was like a new world opening up for Cath—a whole tribe of half brothers and sisters she’d never heard of. I’m not saying she hasn’t struggled with it, but on balance it’s been a good experience.”

Victor hesitated. “I don’t usually tell people about my grafted genealogy,” he apologized.

She glanced at him inquisitively.

“It’s not that I’m ashamed or anything…”

“What, then?”

She touched his arm, a gesture of consolation. He flinched, as if a cold, wet nose had materialized out of the darkness to nuzzle him.

“I’m afraid of what I might find in my before-times, I guess. I have absolutely no recollection of life before the Dalys.”

Maria frowned. This doesn’t add up. She was chasing him down a rabbit hole into an M.C. Escher maze, stairways turning in on themselves, morphing into infinite loops.

“How old were you when you were adopted?”

“About five.”

“And you have no recollections from before…”

“None.”

“So what is your first recollection, Victor?”

Again, he hesitated. He might not be able to go on.

“I remember waking up in a hospital room. A nurse was there. She stroked my hair. That’s my first memory. I am one of the few people you’ll ever meet who remembers the day he was born.”

“There is no time before that?” She waited… “No recollections at all?”

“I’m the dog a loving family’s brought home from the pound. He doesn’t hold memories like we do. There’s places and things he’s afraid of—phobias he can’t explain—but he doesn’t connect those nightmares to any real experiences.”

“But they’re etched into the circuitry of his brain, right?” Maria insisted. “They affect him even though he’s not aware. If he ever sees his former master, for instance, he’ll recognize him at some level. Maybe he’ll wag his tail, maybe he’ll cower, maybe he’ll bare his teeth, but he’ll recognize him, won’t he?”

“Maybe that’s why he never wants to meet the guy.”

“Never?”

He out waited her this time, clamming up for good.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’m nosy.”

“I’m glad you asked,” he replied, smoothing his voice diplomatically. “But I can’t really take you on a guided tour of my personal Neverland because I can’t get there myself, and it’s not likely a place of happy childhood fantasies.”

“Could your parents have died in a crash or something?”

“No. I was abandoned like an unwanted puppy.”

Let go, Maria sighed. And they walked on in silence.

~~~

Exposed. That’s how he felt. Only Richard and Nora knew about his grafted genealogy. And Larry. But no one else. No doubt an official record sat moldering in a folder, in a locked cabinet, somewhere in the bureaucracy that preserved the arcane details of twisted beginnings. R.I.P., he, Nora and Richard had tacitly agreed. Nothing’s real until some snoopy human looks it up and makes a big deal about it. No pillars held up the arched ceiling of the Vatican; no strings supported the laboured flights of jumbo jets; no genealogical cornerstone lay at the foundation of Victor Daly’s life.

I’m okay with that…

Well, I was okay with it.

They walked on, the lights of the West End glimmering insistently through the trees. Victor wanted to find some sequence of words that would reactivate their conversation, but silence stretched like a strained ligament between them.

I’ve said too much already, he figured…

What was that!

Startled, he peered into the darkness toward a clump of bushes off to their left. Something had darted through the enveloping gloom out there. Something with seeming intent. Imagination? Or was it a nocturnal creature scurrying into its thicket.

“What?” Maria tensed.

“Nothing. Just thought I saw movement near the bushes over there—probably a raccoon.”

“Don’t you try to scare me, mister!”

“I’m not!” He raised his arms in mock surrender. He was about laugh it off, but checked the impulse, seeing her pale features floating in the darkness, fear in her eyes.

“I’m sorry, Maria. Let’s get out of here.”

“I’m a bag of nerves,” she apologized miserably. “The bastard’s getting to me.”

Victor had taken her arm and was pointing her back along the path toward the restaurant, when a series of muffled pops sounded from the direction they had been looking. A dark stain burst on the front of Maria’s dress. Then another. And another.

“No!” Victor yelled, leaping in front of her. She screamed, a feral cry of outrage and terror. Victor hustled her across Stanley Park Drive, toward the sea wall embankment. Smack, smack, smack… Three rounds slammed into his back as he shoved her down the slope and tumbled after her, the stream of fire ricocheting through the leaves and branches above them.

By the time they came to rest, the shooting had stopped. Victor scrambled back up to the road, afraid the killer might be approaching to finish them off. “Run Maria,” he bellowed over his shoulder. “Get the hell out of here!” Peering into the darkness over the crest of the embankment, he caught sight of a shadowy figure fleeing between the trees. He lunged forward to give chase, then stopped.

Maria!

Spinning, he stumbled back down to where she sat, slumped at the edge of the seawall, her shoulders heaving. “The fucking bastard!” she howled. “Fucking bastard!” Her voice carrying over the black expanse of English Bay.

He knelt beside her. How could she still be sitting, breathing, cursing her fate? It didn’t make any sense. He placed his hands on her shoulders and pushed back gently to examine her wounds, three spatters tacked down the front of her dress.

Paintballs! They were shooting paintballs!

“Thank god!” Victor cried. “I thought… Thank god!” He hugged her in a fierce embrace.

Maria submitted for a moment, then shoved him away. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” she said, scrambling to her feet.

“But…”

“Come on. We need to get away.”

Confused, he trotted along beside her. “You’re not going to call the cops?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because it would only push us closer to the tipping point,” she shot back. “He’s upped the ante, Victor, and if I go to the police I’ll be upping it, too. I’m not going to give that prick the satisfaction of a VPD file with our names in it.”

“But…”

“End of discussion,” she shouted, turning on him.

“Whoa! Okay!”

“I’m sorry,” she sighed. “But I’m scared, and I’m thinking what we did tonight was stupid. Laurence knows about us now…”

“Knows what?”

“I need to clean up,” she said, walking on. “Can we make a pit stop at your place?”

“Sure,” he agreed, then remembered the photos—Rick, Pauline and their predecessors, populating his own private gallery in all their naked glory.

He sighed. Sooner’s better than later, he supposed.

~~~

The elevator doors rumbled open, Victor and Maria stepped into the marble foyer. Behind the penthouse door Toobee barked and scrabbled frantically. “Quiet Toob!” Victor commanded, fumbling his key into the lock, shoving open the door. “Quiet!” He grabbed Toobee’s collar, hoisting his wriggling best friend up into his arms, the dog frantically licking his face one second, twisting round to bark at Maria the next.

“You need to take that creature to obedience school,” she advised.

“I did. We failed.”

“Stop it!” Maria scolded.

Toobee cocked his head, as if she’d shouted an obscenity in his own Jack Russell dialect, then resumed his furious yapping.

“Enough! Bad dog!”

“Ms. Chalmers says there’s no such thing as a bad dog, only a bad master.”

“Who’s Ms. Chalmers?”

“The Principal of the Come, Sit, Heel Academy of Canine Manners. She expelled me and the Toob after three weeks of failure.”

Maria laughed at the pair of them, the quizzical looks on their faces only making her laugh harder.

Victor smiled stoically.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“No, you’re not.”

“But you’re just so… funny, the two of you.”

“I like making you laugh. Is that okay?”

Bingo! Direct hit! You bastard. You and that stupid dog.

“Of course it’s not okay,” he answered his own question. “You’re married, with a kid to raise and a lunatic husband to escape. You don’t need a confessed weirdo—who also happens to be your lawyer—and his unruly dog complicating your life…. Want a drink?”

“Confessed weirdo?”

“Well, frustrated artist might be a better handle. Make yourself at home. Take a look round.” He turned and headed for what she took to be the kitchen. “Scotch okay?” he asked over his shoulder.

“No thanks,” she answered, scanning the framed photographs lining the hallway. “Maybe a tonic water on ice?”

His apartment was an art gallery of sorts, the collection crowding every plausible space. Maria zoomed in on an image, unable to make it out at first. Her eyes widened as the black and white photo resolved into a composition of skin and hair… the base of a penis standing erect in the wrinkled landscape of its scrotum.

“I warned you,” he called from the kitchen, his voice accompanied by the tinkle of ice cubes in a glass. “I don’t usually invite clients to view my collection.”

“You took these?”

“Guilty,” he confessed. “That’s Rick, you’re looking at. Intelligence is not his greatest asset, but he makes up for that with his Grecian physique. I’ll introduce you to him someday and become instantly jealous.”

A breast cupped in a caressing hand; a face contorted in orgasm; tongues touching. Maria moved from portrait to portrait, fascinated, shocked just enough to make her tingle. The images merged into a sensual collage as she moved down the hall.

“They’re exquisite! Disturbing, but amazingly so.”

“Not everyone would agree with that review,” he said, handing off her tonic water on his way down the hall. “A lot of people think they’re porn.”

“And what to you say to that?”

“They need to adjust their definition of sin so it doesn’t exclude the human body as an art form… every part of the human body, and every act we mortals engage in that quickens true ecstasy in the neural network.”

“Wow!” Maria teased. “I haven’t even got past Art Appreciation 101, but I think I get it.”

The images didn’t strike her as obscene. They were… what would an art critic say?… powerful… powerful statements of sexual freedom. She frowned. Gorgeous! seemed a more apt descriptor, even though they were unsettling. They elicited… What?

Envy! She was startled by her reaction. Could love actually be like that? Fluid, fearless, utterly sensuous, the distilled energy of spirit dancing. None of the exhibits at any of the pretentious galas Laurence had dragged her to came even close to making her feel this way. It’s how we’re meant to be portrayed, she thought. As minor gods.

Victor disappeared round the curving hall into what she took to be a bedroom, re-emerging with a bathrobe draped over his arm. “If you’re not too shy, why don’t you hand me your dress. I’ll rinse the paint out and iron it dry.” He gestured to the bathroom door. “Take a shower if you want.”

She hesitated.

“Don’t worry,” Victor joked. “No peepholes or hidden cameras.”

“You must think me a bit of a prude.”

“Prude, short for prudent, which can also be considered a close relative of intelligent… yes, perhaps I do.” He tilted his glass her way.

She blushed, wanting to shout Stop it!

“Careful,” she warned instead. “A woman gets accustomed to high praises. Then what?”

“The truth, the whole truth, and nothing less than the truth,” he insisted.

Maria stepped into the bathroom, slipped out of her dress and handed it to him from behind the door, which she shut more firmly than she’d intended. She decided to take a shower after all. Laurence’s prank left her feeling violated. Trust him to come up with a perverse tactic like that. Her spirits wavered, flagged. It seems to me, you’ve lived your life, like a candle in the wind, Elton John crooned from somewhere out of her past.

Not true! she objected. More like a flashlight in a tornado.

Then she remembered Victor hustling her down the sea wall embankment and giving chase to her assailant. Such an unlikely hero! But he had risked his life. A man who couldn’t step into elevators without breaking a sweat, who called himself a solicitous solicitor, for god’s sake! She eased herself into the steaming pulse of water and let out a grateful sigh. More than the mud and twigs of a juvenile atrocity were being washed away; she imagined a lifetime’s dirt and neglect dissolving under the stinging jets.

Damn it! she resisted. “God damn it!”

She looked down at her own breasts, at the smooth curve of her belly, then beyond to her thighs and feet. The water streamed over her skin. What would it be like to touch and be touched as if love swaddled every part of you, like… a benediction? What if sex were a species of ballet, hands, tongues, toes exploring the aroused limits of ecstasy? Wasn’t that the greatest gift true lovers could share—the physical expression of joy?

And had Victor really captured that in his photos?

What would it be like to have him photograph me? she wondered… then, Who would capture that image, if he was in it?

~~~

She’s seen my gallery. “Good,” he said out loud. That’s good.

She seems to like my photos. “Even better.”

“How’s it going?” she called down the hall.

“Ready in a sec!”

He’d washed her dress by hand, bunching it so only the stained fabric got wet, then squeezing out the moisture as best he could, the crimson-tinged water gurgling down the drain. You’re destroying evidence, he thought guiltily. Flattening the dress out on his ironing board, he worked the iron quickly, nudging its prow between the pleated fabric, pressing hard.

Maria padded into the dining room.

“Not perfect, but it’ll do,” he said, holding the garment up for inspection.

She examined it, scowling. There were still faint splotches where the paintballs had splattered. “Thank you,” she said.

“It’s ruined, isn’t it? I mean, even if you could get the stains out, the memory can’t be washed away.”

“I just didn’t want Aaron to see me looking like somebody’s bingo card, if he happens to wake up when I get home. After tonight this dress goes in the bin.”

“No it’s doesn’t!” he countered. “Keep it in your closet. It’s evidence. And don’t ever tell anyone it was me who attempted to wash the stains out, okay?”

She reached over the kitchen counter to take it from him, their hands touching for an instant longer than necessary. They stared at one another defiantly.

“I really don’t want us to happen,” she said.

“I know you’re not going to believe me, but I don’t either. Honest.”

“But we can’t help it, right?”

She regretted her snide tone.

“Cold showers and vigorous exercise. That’s the ticket,” he joked.

They laughed.

“Seriously. What are we going to do?”

Victor shrugged, thinking how exquisite it would be to take a picture of the sharp boundary between his bath robe and the elegant curve of her neck. He wanted to kiss her there—feel the electricity of his lips shiver down her spine.

“I’m not going to stop seeing you, if that’s what you’re getting at. Not unless you insist. Maybe not even then, unless you get a court injunction.”

“Will you represent me on that?”

He laughed and winced at the same time.

~~~

“Good thing you’ve got flexible childcare,” Cathy yawned, swinging her legs off the sofa and sitting up groggily.

“Thanks, Cath,” Maria kicked off her shoes, flopping down beside her. “How was the little rascal?”

“Best date I’ve had in years! Handsome, polite and only interested in what’s up here.” Cathy tapped the side of her head.

“Yeah, well, give him a couple of years, honey. That’ll change.”

“So how was your date?”

“It was an eventful meeting…”

Cathy stared, the same way you would at a waiter who’d forgotten the cutlery.

“Okay! I really like him!”

“So, what’s the matter with that? You look like you just swallowed a gallon of Buckley’s cough medicine.”

“I don’t want to really like him!”

“Oh. That is a problem, I’m sure.”

“Besides, he’s… um… strange.”

“He’s a man. What did you expect. Some are better, some worse, but all their brains are pickled.”

“It’s not that, Cath,” Maria laughed. “He’s a gentleman, too—I mean gentle man. He loves me, came right out and almost said so… on our first date… it wasn’t even a date, for Christ’s sake, it was supposed to be a sort of consultation dinner…”

“Oh, come on!” Cathy hooted.

“Okay! Okay! I just had no idea how deep he would go on the first dive.”

Cathy smirked. “What do you mean ‘he’s strange’? Not as strange as your last date, I hope. Or at least not strange in the same way.”

Maria felt her face pucker. “I’ve already told you about his thing with elevators.”

Cathy nodded.

“Then there’s this little tick he has when you touch him…”

“You touched him!”

“Well, yes. Incidental touching, shall we say. In the park and going up the elevator to his apartment…”

“You went to his place!”

“Well, yes. I had to get cleaned up a bit…”

“Cleaned up! What were you two doing, rolling around in the bushes?”

They laughed, leaning into each other like a couple of school girls. “No!” Maria said. “Well, yes, actually. I’ll tell you that part later, but you should see his place, Cath. It’s classy, chic but comfortable… lived in. It looks out on False Creek and he’s got it done up like something you’d see in an interior design magazine. You can tell he thinks about everything before he buys. And neat! Holy smokes, not a coaster out of place.”

“What’s so strange about that? Were you expecting: underpants hanging from the lampshades, empty pizza boxes under the sofa?”

Maria shook her head. “Enough with the stereotypes,” she scolded. “It’s what’s hanging on the walls that’s strange.” She described Victor’s photos.

“Erotic art, right?” Cathy wanted to know.

“It’s gorgeous. I’ve never been a fan of the genre, but his stuff is so sensuous, explicit but dignified. You have to see it.”

“I’d like to,” Cathy said thoughtfully. “Sounds pretty amazing.” She paused, then asked, “Has he ever exhibited?”

Maria shrugged.

“Surely someone with that kind of talent would have mounted a show or two. I’ll have to consult Dr. Google.”

Again, Maria shrugged.

Then Cathy noticed the stains on Maria’s dress. She craned forward, gawking. “Miss your mouth or something?” she asked. “You look like a shrimp cocktail.”

“That’s the part I’ve been putting off,” Maria stiffened. “Laurence struck again. That makes twice in a week.”

Cathy listened intently as Maria described the attack in Stanley Park. “Holy shit! He’s really dialing it up, Mar. You’ve got to go to the police. I mean, how long before his goons start firing real bullets?”

“It would be a waste of time going to the police, Cath. There’s no way they could link this to Laurence. It could have been a random incident—kids with nothing better to do. I know different, and so do you, but Laurence would laugh the cops off his property if they ever confronted him with this.”

“Yeah, but wouldn’t it be worthwhile building up a record? Isn’t there something called ‘cumulative evidence’? You get smarmy phone calls. My place gets trashed. You get paintballed in Stanley Park. There’s a pattern of accelerating violence here, isn’t there? Maybe go for a restraining order? Push back, Mar! Push hard!”

“Restraining order!” Maria scoffed. “Even if I could get one, do you think some judge’s order is going to stop Laurence from doing whatever the hell he wants? How often have you read in the news about some woman getting smacked by her stark-raving ex against the wishes of the court? Like I said, going to the cops would only up the ante, and get my name linked to Victor’s as more than a client. Laurence would love that. In his twisted mind it would be just cause for pushing things even farther. He’s enjoying himself, Cath. Don’t you see? He really gets off on this shit.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to look for places to run and hide. Bide my time. See if an opportunity opens up. I don’t know…”

“What about Victor? Can’t he help? He practises family law, for god’s sake. He must have run into situations like this before.”

“There’s not much he can do unless Laurence steps into the open. As long as the asshole shoots from cover and uses proxies, it’s going to be really hard to prove anything. He’s made a career of this, remember…”

Her mobile jangled, and Maria knew it would be Laurence this time.

“The fucker even makes the phone ring differently,” she moaned.

Cathy jumped up and grabbed the phone off the hall table. “Hello?” she barked.

“Maria’s gone to bed,” she said coolly.

“No, Laurence, I won’t wake her up.”

“I don’t care if it’s a fucking emergency, it can wait.”

“I’m just visiting. My place needed a makeover, so Maria said I could stay here. Sort of like an adult sleep-over.”

“Well, it’s really been nice chatting Laurence, but I’m missing my beauty sleep, so if you don’t mind, I’ll say good night.”

“Yeah. I’ll tell her you called, and to switch on her phone again tomorrow at a decent hour.”

“Prick!” She punched the end call button. “If he calls again…” she growled, then shook her head, confused. “This is god-damn ridiculous!”

“Thanks hon.” Maria offered a wan smile.

“No problem. I kind of like needling the bastard…

“Okay! Okay!” she apologized when Maria frowned. “Don’t twist the tiger’s tail. But sometimes you have to let him know you’re not going to roll over and play dead, don’t you?”

“Oh, he knows we’re breathing, Cath,” Maria said. “The bastard anticipates every move we make. Christ, he might be listening in on our conversation right now.”

“Let’s not get carried away, Mar!”

“Windows vibrate. Houses reveal their secrets for those who’ve got enough money and the right technology, my friend. He knew when to trash your place; knew Victor and I would be dining in Stanley Park; knows when Aaron’s at daycare and what route we follow to get there; he’s mapping our every move, Cathy. Believe me.”

“Then let’s shut up and go to bed. He can listen to me snore for a while.

“Fuck you, Laurence!” she shouted at the darkened window looking out on Ogden Avenue and English Bay.

~~~

At least once a month Victor went to dinner at his parents’ place in East Van. Richard and Nora Daly had greyed since he’d left home. They both walked with a slight stoop, on the verge of doddering. Wrinkles, liver spots, cataracts, afflictions of the living dead (as his father put it), were shriveling their looks and prospects.

“Why don’t you guys retire early?” he’d asked once. “You’ve put in enough time by now to collect a pretty hefty pension between the two of you.”

“Retire!” Richard yelped. “Why would we want to do that?”

“Why not?”

“Our work isn’t finished. I, for one, am not ready to wash up on some tropical beach to spend the rest of my days sipping rum and cokes, playing golf and baking like a stuffed Christmas turkey under a tropic sun. What about you, dear?”

“I don’t think that’s exactly what Victor had in mind, honey,” Nora laughed. “But, as you’ve put it like that, no, I’m not ready to bask in the golden rays of retirement either. I love my kids.”

Victor smiled, zipping through a yellow light at Terminal and Clark, heading up First Avenue. Dyed and baked orange, he thought.  Workers’ rights, robust social programs, universal health and dental care, a living wage, free education from cradle to grave, those were the socialist goals they strove for.

Those and the democratic rights and freedoms that allowed people to disagree, he acknowledged. To wit: Their only adopted son’s penchants for penthouses, fast cars, expensive restaurants, apolitical politics… And erotic art?

He gunned the Porsche, nipping into the gap in front of an elderly lady floating up the hill toward Commercial behind the wheel of an ancient, hulking Buick. He glanced in the rear-view mirror. The old bird hadn’t even noticed his nifty maneuver. Nobody loses, he figured. Those with quick wits and reflexes worked the interstices and seams to gain an edge; the jostling herd lumbered along at its accustomed pace, unaffected.

His parents frowned on that sort of self-justifying logic – Nora would have scolded if she’d been sitting in the passenger seat.

From almost anyone other than them, he would have brushed off that kind of disapproval as a species of envy, but they were incurably sincere.

Right onto Commercial, south to McSpadden, left down to the end of the street and he was home. Or at least a place that felt like home, even though he’d been on his own fifteen-plus years. He frowned, thinking of my room up in the dormered attic – same squeaky bed, chipped chest of drawers, cramped desk. Why don’t they redecorate? he wondered, pulling up to the curb. It was creepy, having his past preserved up there, in their suburban mausoleum.

Nora looked up from the flowerbed in front of the porch as he crossed the sidewalk. “Well, look who the wind blew in!” she waved, hoisting herself up from her knees. She might have been a missionary in some disturbed corner of the world, maintaining her sense of tranquility and decorum nurturing an English garden amid the mayhem. No! he corrected.Too colonial, that picture.

“Hi Mom!”

They hugged.

“Where’s Dad?”

“Barefoot in the kitchen,” she bragged. “It’s his turn at the stove.”

“Then I’d better get in there and offer moral support to my half of the species!”

“Moral support!” Nora brandished her trowel dangerously. “You roll up those designer sleeves, young man, and get your hands in the soup. I didn’t raise my boy to be a mealy-mouthed chauvinist, paying lip service to the cause.”

“All right! All right!” He retreated into the house. “Hey Dad!” he shouted from the vestibule. “I’ve been ordered to join you on KP duty.”

“In here, son,” Richard called, wiping his hands on his favourite candy-striped apron as Victor entered the kitchen. He hugged Victor hard, once—a masculine clutch-and-release. “You’re looking good,” he said.

“You mean I haven’t added any paunch since you last saw me?” Victor feigned surprise. “I guess my fitness program is paying off.”

“Fitness program?”

“Two beers a day, minimum. Work for every swig; lift your elbow off the couch. Extend your arm when switching channels with the remote—gain that little shot of cardio. Raise your head off the cushion every now and again for a look round. Work those neck muscles. That sort of thing.”

“Come on,” Richard said, “you do the carrots, I’ll continue with the potatoes. We’re going to have a chowder the likes of which has never been tasted outside the sacred precincts of Nantucket, home made bread, some of my favourite Australian white wine, and side dishes of absolutely perfect asparagus, drizzled with butter and lemon… yes, real butter… your mother and I had it out in the grocery store’s dairy section. I prevailed.”

Before he began chopping, Victor swung open the fridge door and grabbed a brew. “The fitness regimen is never broken, even for away-games,” he said, twisting the top off and tilting the bottle to his lips. “Want one?”

“Yeah. Why not?” Richard agreed. “But you know I really mean it, you’re looking good.”

“Thanks, Dad.” Victor handed his father a beer and nodded. Then they got down to serious business, their knives clacking in unison at the kitchen counter.

~~~

Her trashed squat in Kits; the groomed and gated grounds of West Vancouver. Her flatulent, cranky Toyota; the stealthy, sleek limos and whizzing sports cars prowling the North Shore roads. Her frumpy-dumpy constitution; the spandex tigresses loping along the shoulders and sidewalks of Marine Drive…

Inside her head The Barenaked Ladies launched into one of her favourite tunes, and Cathy hummed along distractedly, then laughed when she recognized the music.

If I had a million dollars

(If I had a million dollars)

Well I’d buy you a house

I would buy you a house…



“No, no!” she tutted…


If I had a billion dollars

(If I had a billion dollars)
cause a million’s not enough

no, no, it’s never, ever enough…


“That’s more like it,” she laughed…


If I had that billion dollars
(If I had my trillion dollars)

I’d buy me an ATV
A gigantic ATV


And if I had a trillion dollars
(If I had a zillion dollars)

I’d load that sucker up

Yes I’d load that sucker up



And if I had a zillion dollars

(Had my first gazillion dollars)
Cause no number’s big enough

You can always buy more stuff


So if I had that gazillion dollars
(when I’ve got my gazillion dollars)

I’ll put a cannon up on top

Oh yeah, cannons make you tough



And I’ll make it armour plated

(Yes, I’ll make it armour plated)

So your bullets will bounce off

Like ping-pong balls, you toff


Oh when I get that first gazillion
(When I get that first gazillion)

Well, you better cut and run
Oh yeah, you better cut and run


Cuz I’ll be heading for your doorway
(Yeah, headed for your doorway)
And I’m gonna have some fun

Oh yeah, fun ’til I’m good and done…

Slowing, she waited for a string of eastbound cars to pass, then accelerated through a gap, entering the cloistered calm of Laurence Selkirk’s neighbourhood. The Taj occupies a waterfront hillside amidst a pod of mansions east of Lighthouse Park. She’d visited the place four or five times over the years, reluctantly accepting Maria’s invitations to his snooty soirees until she’d had enough. “I always feel like swinging from the chandeliers or knocking over one of his precious vases,” she complained. “I can’t stand it, Mar! It’s stifling.”

So they shifted venues, opting for girls’-nights-out in Kits, or downtown, or… wherever, darlink – it’s the company that’s important, not where you keep it.

Cathy thought she’d seen the last of the place, but there she was at the gate with an appointment to see the man himself. Laurence had been mildly surprised and highly suspicious when she phoned to finagle the invitation out of him.

“And to what would I owe the pleasure of your company?” he’d asked in that snide, smarmy way of his.

“Oh, I thought we might talk about our mutual circle of friends,” she answered breezily. “You know, catch up on a bit of gossip, compare notes. It’s been so long since I’ve visited The Taj, I’ve forgotten what an uncluttered, architecturally proportioned home should look like.”

He hated it when they called his mansion ‘The Taj’. Cathy smiled, remembering how the airwaves had bristled.

“Come now, Cathy,” he’d sighed grandly. “Let’s be serious, shall we. Why do you want to see me? I mean, we’re not best of friends, you and I.

“Has Maria put you up to it?”

“Sometimes we do things for our friends that they don’t know anything about.”

“What kind of things?”

“Act as intermediaries, for instance.”

“Why would you want to act as an ‘intermediary’ for Maria? She’s perfectly capable of acting on her own, isn’t she?”

“She’s afraid, Laurence.”

“Afraid? Why?”

“I suppose you’ve heard that someone broke into my apartment and trashed the place while Maria and I were out having a coffee at Starbucks the other day?”

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“They did quite a good job: tipped drawers, slashed upholstery, that sort of thing. Could be coincidence, but it’s got Maria spooked.”

“Coincidence? What kind of coincidence?”

“Stress pushes us to strange conclusions, Laurence. So I’m phoning to see if there’s any way I can help…”

“I don’t see how…”

“Like I said, maybe I can act as an intermediary.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“A voice of reason. A friend, offering some best advice. That sort of thing.”

The seconds ticked anxiously by, then suddenly he agreed. She almost wished he hadn’t, as she pulled up to the Taj’s gate. A palpitation of fear shivered through her. What the fuck am I doing? She stared at the intercom, positioned on a metal post outside her driver’s side window, saw her nervous reflection in the glass.

Do it! She rolled down the window and jabbed the button.

“Yes?” a dignified voice inquired after a suitable pause.

“Cathy Vermeer. I’m expected.”

“Please come in,” Laurence’s ‘man’ Gordon said, in a tone formal as an undertaker’s.

The gate rolled aside and she drove around a concealing outcropping of landscaped rock, up to the front entrance. The Taj is oriented toward the ocean, the slope giving the mansion a modest profile from the street. Laurence’s architect had capitalized on this limitation by blending the Taj into its environment—a perfunctory nod to Frank Lloyd Wright, Cathy judged.

The sculpted wooden door swung opened as she wrestled herself out of her Toyota, rounding the car and crossing the cobbled drive. Gordon gestured pompously, then led her through to a marbled balcony, then down a sweeping staircase into the reception area. “Mr. Selkirk will be with you momentarily,” he said, inviting her to take a seat in a leather chair next to the fireplace. “Can I get you anything to drink?”

Cathy shook her head. “No, thank you,” she said.

Uncomfortable in its slouching leather, she wrestled herself upright as soon as he left, positioned herself in the centre of the room, waiting, listening with growing anticipation, until she heard the brisk, padded tread of footsteps coming down the hall. 

“Hello Cathy!” Laurence approached jauntily.

She gave his extended hand a curt pump, letting it go as quickly as possible.

“It’s a great view, isn’t it?” He gestured toward the expanse of English Bay, out beyond the encircling patio. “I enjoy it, too—every morning—until I remember how much I paid for it.” He laughed icily, inviting her to take a seat.

“So perhaps you can elaborate a little on this mediation proposal,” he was saying.

Cathy remained standing. Opening a wallet-sized purse slung from her shoulder on a skinny strap, she pulled out a wad of photos, which she held up for him. “I thought you might like to see these first,” she said, keeping her voice bright with sarcasm.

He scowled, looking at the first from the series she’d taken of her gutted apartment.

“Are you here to harass me, or to help Maria?” he demanded.

“This one’s my living room,” Cathy ignored him, shuffling to another photo. “Quite the makeover. You can see how they’ve added swatches of colour in a random composition all over the walls. I’m most impressed with the avant-garde approach they took, breaking the conventional boundary between wall surfaces and furniture. Spraying over the TV screen was quite a statement, I thought.”

“Enough!” he growled. “Get out of here now or I’ll have you thrown out…”

“See the decorative slashes, releasing the inner content of my sofa cushions…”

“Get out!” he threatened, but didn’t move, just sat there glaring as if hers was a tantrum beneath his dignity.

Arrogant bastard.

She flipped to the next photo. “This is the sanctum sanctorum, my bedroom. My place of fantasies, dreams and occasional close encounters. The makeover crew went for a distinctly wild and rumpled look here, adding more identifiably personal touches to the themes of random wall-colouring and slashing. See how they emptied my dresser drawers and harmonized my wardrobe with its altered milieu. Quite ingenious, don’t you think?”

A hand clamped round her arm like a vice, yanking her away from Laurence, who continued to regard her with a smile both bitter and contemptuous.

“Get her out of here,” he ordered. “Make sure she’s off the property and out of the area.”

She let the photos drop to the floor as she was pulled away and steered forcefully in the direction of the staircase. She tried wrenching her arm free, but Laurence’s bodyguard yanked her straight. “Just walk with me, ma’am, and everything will be okay. I’m going to escort you to your car then I will see you off the property, do you understand?”

“Do you do home decorations?”

“Once you are off the property, I will ask you to leave the area. Mr. Selkirk’s house and its approaches are monitored 24/7. Do you understand?”

She glanced up at her handler, a beefy character in casual jacket and slacks. Sandy blond hair, cut short. Angular features. Handsome in a Sears catalogue sort of way. She walked obediently in his grip across the cobblestone apron, back to her car.

“Do you ever ask yourself why you work for someone like Laurence Selkirk?” she asked him, getting in.

“Don’t come back,” he warned, leaning over the opened car door. “I don’t want to see you again, ma’am, and if you’ve got half a brain, you’ll avoid seeing me.” He slammed the door and stepped back, waiting for her to drive off.

~~~

After dinner, The National with Peter Mansbridge. Victor sank contentedly into his end of the living room sofa, letting the chowder and asparagus settle while, as Richard observed, “a distillate of current events is delivered by a racially, gender balanced, career savvy crew of middle class commentators.”

Nora sighed, rolling her eyes.

“Then why watch, Dad?” Victor challenged.

“When you’re in the desert, you drink muddy water.”

Victor laughed. There had been a time when his parents’ eccentricities embarrassed him. But age and distance had transmuted criticism into a species of amused pride. Richard and Nora championed a better world. They clung to their ideals despite the obvious. Classified lust and greed as aberrations, believed there was some form of treatment or education that could cure the nihilistic bent in human nature.

A part of him envied their naivete, but he certainly didn’t want to be affected by it.

Mansbridge listed the top stories of the day: Iraq, of course, and Afghanistan. The price of gas. Global warming, rising sea levels… and so on. Victor caught himself dozing. Snapped back into wakefulness as Mansbridge’s cadence and tone up-shifted into the dramatic. 

“Tonight, we conclude our Missing Persons series with a story out of Abbotsford, British Columbia. Police there have kept open the file on a young woman who vanished without a trace more than three and a half decades ago. Crystal Doer’s parents left the sixteen-year-old at home alone, when they went to church that August morning in 1972. They never saw their daughter again…”

Crystal?

Aroused from his postprandial torpor by the report, Victor was counting the decades since Crystal’s disappearance, when a photograph of the missing girl flashed onto the screen.

He jolted forward, zooming in on the defiant, smiling teen.

“Who are you?”

“What?” Richard shouted over the din of the television.

“Nothing, Dad,” Victor slumped back into the sofa cushions, deflated, confused.

Stupid! he thought. The girl was probably dead before I was born. It didn’t make any sense… But there was no denying some part of him recognized Crystal Doer.

Nora, sitting next to him on the sofa, nodded at the TV screen. “Does she remind you of someone?”

“Yeah.”

“A client, perhaps? Or a university friend… you had so many friends, as I recollect?”

That must be it.

“Let’s switch that thing off,” Nora complained at the lead in to a commercial break. “It’s depressing.”

Richard looked puzzled.

“Well, I’m going to make myself a cup of tea,” she announced grumpily, leaving them just as Mansbridge introduced the feature segment.

“Thirty-five years ago, on August 13, 1972, Albert and Barbara Doer said good-bye to their sixteen-year-old daughter Crystal, and left for church. They’d had a dispute with the girl, and the fact haunts them to this day. They wanted Crystal to go with them, but their daughter was in a rebellious mood and refused. They were angry when they left and concerned about the behaviour of their little girl. They closed the door behind them and never saw Crystal again. She simply vanished, leaving a gaping hole in their troubled lives.

Here’s Natalie Clancy with their heart-wrenching story…”

The scene switched from the Toronto studio to the front lawn of an anonymous bungalow. Natalie Clancy stared into the camera for a moment, as if she didn’t know it was switched on, then started talking. “For thirty-five years the Doers have been waiting for their daughter to come home. The church-going family lives in this modest bungalow in Abbotsford, B.C., the same house their daughter disappeared from so many years ago.

“They still haven’t gotten over the pain of losing her, and even though this house is haunted for them with memories of that before-time, they refuse to move. They want to be here when Crystal comes home.”

As she cued the clip, the image transitioned to the Doer’s dining room. The greying couple sat on the far side of a mahogany table, holding up a picture of their daughter. A strip label identified them as Albert and Barbara Doer. “We’re still waiting for her to come through that front door,” Albert said grimly. “In our hearts she’s never left. We know she’s out there somewhere and we’re hoping that maybe she’ll see this and give us a call. That would be the happiest day of our lives—if she’d only give us a call.”

“But no call has come,” Natalie Clancy cut back in. “And police have not been able to find a single clue into Crystal’s disappearance from this rural home. There were no reports of Crystal being spotted anywhere else that day, and there haven’t been any since. There was no sign of a struggle. No note to explain where Crystal might have gone. Nothing. So hers has become one of the unsolved missing persons cases on file with police forces across Canada. With no clues to act on and little hope of finding any leads after thirty-five years, the Crystal Doer case has slipped into the bureaucratic limbo of unsolved mysteries—cases where police are not even sure a crime has been committed.

“The man in charge of the investigation, Inspector Kevin Hamilton, admits the trail is cold, but insists the file has not been closed.”

“We simply can’t say what happened to Crystal,” Inspector Hamilton explained sadly. “We don’t have any evidence to act on. A search was conducted at the time. Neighbours were interviewed, friends, teachers, coaches, anyone who might have had some information that would lead us to her. But we never got any leads. It’s hard for the parents.”

“Do you hold out any hope?”

“Someone, somewhere knows what happened to Crystal Doer, and we continue to hope that person will come forward. A show like this might jog somebody’s memory, and we urge people to give us a call if they remember anything from that day—anything at all.”

Again, Crystal’s face peered out from the screen; again, Victor’s chest tightened.

The image dissolved to a shot of Natalie Clancy touring the Doer property, the camera following along. “The Doer house is located in a rural neighbourhood on a quiet street. There are no houses for more than a hundred yards in any direction and the house faces a wooded area. Police won’t speculate about what might have happened here, but it’s not surprising there were no witnesses to Crystal’s final hours at home. There would have been few people around.

“Did she go for a walk? Somehow get lost? Was she picked up by someone?”

Albert Doer raised his hands in frustration, then let them fall. “We don’t know. We pray that she ran away. Hard as that would be to accept, it’s what we pray for, because that would mean she’s alive somewhere and can contact us when she feels it’s okay. That’s all we want, is to hear her voice again. There’s not a day goes by I don’t want to hold her in my arms and say ‘I love you honey, I love you.’ But we’ve got nothing left except for pictures and memories.” His eyes moistened. Barbara Doer touched his arm gently.

“Jesus!” Richard sighed. “I can’t even begin to imagine.”

Natalie Clancy picked up the narrative again, but Victor wasn’t listening. She reeled off statistics and odds—stuff he didn’t want to hear. Albert Doer’s appeal troubled him. Confused, he shunned a disturbing sense of responsibility for a man he didn’t know, whose daughter he couldn’t possibly have met.

“Well,” he announced, launching himself from the sofa. “Gotta go.”

“So soon?” his mother pleaded, returning from the kitchen with her tea.

“Yeah Mom. Busy day tomorrow.”

“You’re too busy these days.”

Richard and Nora shepherded him to the front door and watched from the porch as he climbed into his car and drove off. They smiled and waved, proud as always that he was their son. But for a fleeting moment he couldn’t help seeing a look of fear, almost terror transform Nora’s features. She recovered quickly, but he knew she had recognized Crystal Doer too.

~~~

“Shit!” Victor glanced down First Avenue as he sailed through the intersection. He’d missed his turn… would have to take a left at Venables, head into town from there.

Who is she? Someone he’d known at school? Another guy’s girlfriend maybe? Or one of those proud, unattainable goddesses he’d never had enough gumption to approach? Perhaps the teen version of a colleague or client? A waitress? Receptionist? Somebody’s daughter?…

Duh! Of course she was that.

But none of those composites was the person he recognized in Crystal Doer. No matter how hard he strained against it, a certainty was taking hold—like an irresistible scent in a bloodhound’s nose—that she was a ghost from his before-times.

And I knew her well.

Victor accelerated, focused on the reflexes of driving fast—reality spewing out of its vantage point as a torrent of cars, buildings, stop lights…

How could a teenager disappear like that? And why? He sifted the available evidence. Had she run away? Been abducted?

A pedestrian materialized in his windscreen, doddering onto a crosswalk behind his stroller. Victor jammed on the brakes, screeching to a halt. The codger gave him a dirty look. “Watch where yer going, idiot!” The old guy shook his fist.

“Sorry!” Victor pleaded through the glass helplessly. As soon as his accuser cleared the front bumper, he popped the clutch and peeled away.

Crystal Doer?

“Who is she?”

He shunned the unsettling permutations, but knew her TV image would never fade. That, in fact, she had arisen out of the impregnated soil of his own brain and would haunt him forever.

Why now?

He sailed through the intersection at Venables.

“Shit!” He’d have to carry on to Hastings and make his way west from there.

What happened to her?

Abduction?

Seemed unlikely. How could you grab a young woman from her home without leaving any signs of a struggle? So let’s assume she left willingly. Why would a sixteen year old girl run from a loving home without even leaving a note?

Christian family; pretty, rebellious teenage daughter. What might that add up to? Secret lover? Got pregnant? Couldn’t live a lie?

August, 1972? If she had a child he would have been in his mid-thirties…

“For Christ’s sake!” He thumped the steering wheel, jammed a CD into the disk drive and cranked it up as he careened left at Commercial onto Hastings, accelerating west into the straight-away.

“Fucking ridiculous!”

Steppenwolf blared…

Get your motor runnin’
Head out on the highway

Looking for adventure

In whatever comes our wa-a-ay



Yeah, darlin’ gonna make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once and

Explode into spa-a-ace…

It was one of the discs his parents had bequeathed, proving by way of an early inheritance they hadn’t always been stodgy elders…

Mom reacted, too? Victor recalled.

Why? 

The sudden anguish he’d seen her eyes pained him.

Had she recognized Crystal Doer, too?.

“No!” he objected.

But the hunch wouldn’t die.

Fuck!

It took root, ignoring his curse. Didn’t need light or oxygen to thrive. He could seal it up in a dark never-to-be-opened cell of his psyche and still it would send out shoots. Rhizomes would burrow through the interstices of consciousness, insinuating their ways into his present tense.

Even if Crystal Doer turned out to be a total, unrelated stranger, she had forever altered his frame of reference. He was no longer a man whose identity began with the given name Victor, ended with the surname Daly.

Stopped for a red light at Hastings and Main, he watched the perpetual intercourse in front of Carnegie Hall, diagonally opposite. Hookers, dealers, addicts, johns… the illicit business of the place went on at all hours in every kind of weather. These people, some barely recognizable as human, flocked from the warrens and grottoes of the Downtown Eastside. They made deals to fuck, shoot up, steal. They swapped far-fetched dreams about winning lotteries, carrying off heists, making life-altering trades. They got sick and died, right there on the street.

Crystal Doer might be living like this. He slumped into the leather upholstery of his Porsche, would have stayed that way forever, except the light turned green, a car honked, and his cell phone vibrated all on the same cue. “Hello,” he barked, accelerating through the intersection.

It was Maria.

~~~

“He called. Wants me to know he knows everything.” Her words stumbled over each other in their fury. “Jesus, Vic, I knew this was possible, but I’m still pissed off… and scared.”

“What, exactly, did he say?”

“With Laurence, it’s not so much what he says as how he says it. It’s all code. He’s contacted the best lawyer in the city, but doesn’t want to go that route. Asked what I was up to last night? Why I didn’t answer my phone? How my friend Cathy was doing, after offering condolences that her place had been broken into?”

“Did he threaten you?”

“If you mean did he come right out and warn me to ‘stop meeting with Victor Daly or else’? No. But you better believe that is what he’s saying.”

“What do you think he’s going to do?”

Silence.

“How do you think he’s getting his information?”

“Don’t know,” she said. “He’s tagged my vehicle? Bugged my phone? Got me under twenty-four-hour surveillance? Who knows? I’m calling from my landlady’s, just to be on the safe side.”

“Where can we meet?”

“Starbucks?”

“Okay. Give me a few minutes to make some calls, and I’ll see you there,” he said. “We’ll get an agency to do a sweep of your place for starters. I know some people who are very good. If Laurence has you under surveillance, they’ll find out.”

“Victor?”

“Yeah?”

“I can’t pay for all this.”

He paused a second or two, letting the implications of what he was about to say sink in. “Let’s not worry about that right now, okay?”

For another second or two, silence.

“And will Laurence know what we’re up to?” she asked, uncertain.

“If we start killing bugs, for sure. But do we have any options at this point, Mar…” His throat constricted. He coughed.

“Maria?” He wondered if the line had gone dead…

“We have to make a move. You’ve got evidence of his philandering—that will be enough to get started. You’ve also got evidence of his underworld dealings—I’d like to see it.”

“We’ll both be dead if he finds out.”

“I’ll meet you at Starbucks in a couple of minutes.”

~~~

He pulled into the lot, climbed out of his Porsche and sauntered into the coffee shop. Other patrons, watching his easy gait, wouldn’t guess he had a care in the world, she thought.

Catching her eye, he strode over to her table, leaned forward and hugged.

Maria didn’t object, but she reciprocated like a real live rag doll, he thought.

He stepped back, turned the chair opposite around and straddled it, his legs splayed out in front of him, arms folded on the seat back.

Maria shook her head, smiling. “All you need is a ten-gallon hat to fit that big head of yours, buster.”

“Why, thank you ma’am.”

His cocky act worked like an antidote. She closed her eyes and let things settle.

“Where’s Aaron?’ he asked.

“Cathy’s still camped out at my place, paying her way in childcare credits.”

“Does she know what’s going on?”

“Oh yeah,” Maria nodded. “She knows.”

“Do you think anyone’s followed you here?”

She shook her head.

“They wouldn’t be easy to spot. We’ll have your vehicle checked for location transmitters and your place for bugs. What about your mobile? Is it secure?”

Maria shook her head. “Far as I know.”

“Switch it off,” he whispered.

“What?”

He made a chopping motion. “Off,” he mouthed.

“It could be transmitting your location to Laurence as we speak. You never know,” he cautioned, once the phone’s screen went black. “He might be listening in on your calls. Its mic could even be eavesdropping from your pocket on private conversations.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Really.”

She reddened.

“We’ll get a pro to do a sweep of your apartment and car. We also need to get you a new mobile.”

“And I thought I was being so careful,” she said bitterly.

He leaned forward, his eyes locked on. “We are going to be very careful from now on. We’re going to make it safe for you and Aaron,” he said. “Then we start pushing back.”

Maria raised her eyebrows.

“We file for divorce, seeking full custody and restricted access…”

“But you said yourself that wouldn’t work!”

“That will be our opening gambit. We’re not going to win with what I’ve got so far; his lawyer will come to that conclusion pretty quick, too. But he probably won’t have the full picture, and that can work in our favour—drive a wedge between Laurence and his lawyer as it comes out.”

“You mean the underworld shit?”

“Yeah, to begin with. And we’ll see if we can dredge up more.”

Maria shook her head sadly. “I’m not sure I want to go ahead with this.”

“Okay,” he said. “Your call. But in the meantime, let me have a look at the stuff you do have.”

She took his hand. “You understand, don’t you… why I’m afraid?”

“Like I said, it’s your call, Maria.” He paused, letting that sink in. “But I’m not going away.”

She smiled doubtfully, like you would at a teenager vowing to take on the world.

“Good,” he cut short her appraisal. “Now let’s get you home. I’m going to call a guy who will do a sweep of your place. If there’s any bugs, he’ll exterminate them.”

~~~

Toobee went through his usual antics, racing up and down the hall, pawing Victor’s leg, barking. “Settle, man! It’s only been a few hours.” He placed the dossier on the counter top between the kitchen and dining room, bending down to pat the dog. “Okay,” he soothed. “Okay.” Toobee wriggled, panted and grunted, his claws clicking frantically on the hardwood.

Victor and Maria had skimmed the thick sheaf of field reports from Don Pirelli, private investigator, and a hodge-podge of evidence Maria had ferreted out during her last months with Laurence. “These are duplicates,” she told him, handing the information over. “Like I said, a complete set is stored in a safe deposit box.”

The dossier sort of made things official. Pro bono of course, but nonetheless…

Victor sighed, flipping open the dossier. PI Pirelli had logged a lot of hours.

“That’s one of the perks of being hitched to a rich bastard,” Maria had shrugged. “You get to use his own money to buy some high-priced surveillance.” When Victor mentioned how difficult and dangerous it would be to tail a guy like Laurence Selkirk, she nodded. “I warned Vince,” she said, “but he didn’t seem fazed.”

“He’s good at what he does,” Victor said. “And not easily intimidated.”

“You’ve met him?”

“In a professional capacity, yes. He’s good.”

Very good, Victor thought, digging into the chronology of Laurence Selkirk’s movements in Pirelli’s reports: his office downtown; the Vancouver Club; The William Tell with business associates… “Whoa!” Victor held up a photo of Laurence leaving what appeared to be a motel room. A second shot caught a young woman exiting the same room at Kingsway Motor Inn.

“Jesus!” Victor sucked in the air between his teeth.

May 23, 3:34 p.m. Subject’s car parked eastbound on the street outside the Kingsway Motor Inn. Mr. Selkirk exited the vehicle, walked through the parking lot and let himself into Unit #25. Exited the room at 4:05 p.m. alone and drove away. I figured there must have been someone in there with him and decided to wait and see if his companion would come out. At 4:09 p.m. a Yellow Cab #567 pulled up to the unit and shortly after a young woman (see photo 2006-05-23/16:10:21) exited the room and got into the cab. I decided to follow to see if I could determine who she was.

You’re in for a surprise, Victor thought.

The cab with Subject #2 inside proceeded west on Kingsway to King Edward, then continued west on King Edward to Angus Drive, then north to the intersection of Alexandra Street, where Subject #2 disembarked and entered a private property. Confirmed later that Subject #2 was Brittney Goddard, daughter of Hugh and Melinda Goddard, owners of Financial Ventures West…

“And one of the wealthiest and best connected families in the city,” Victor murmured. No wonder Selkirk doesn’t want this stuff turning up in court. Hugh Goddard wasn’t the kind of guy you wanted to piss off…

The dossier contained three more shots of Brittney Goddard and Laurence Selkirk at the motel, all following the same pattern: him arriving, staying about half an hour, then leaving alone; her catching a cab after he’d gone. There were others, but Victor didn’t recognize any of them. It didn’t matter. There was more than enough evidence to prove Selkirk’s infidelity. But Pirelli didn’t stop there.

June 10, 2006: I approached the motel desk manager at 5:10 p.m. and asked if I could rent room #25. When she declined, I offered $100 for a ‘10-minute stay’. She agreed. Entered room #25 at 5:16 p.m. Blankets and bedding were unmade. There were stains on the sheet, which I swabbed. Detected a residue of white powder on the night table. Collected a sample. Exited room at 5:23 p.m.

A DNA analysis of the swab is included in this file, confirming the semen was Mr. Selkirk’s. The white substance collected from the night table was verified by laboratory analysis as cocaine.

Victor shut the dossier. There was more. Lots more…

Enough! he sighed. Even though he had seen many files like it, this one left him feeling soiled, as if absorbing its contents somehow left a poisonous patina inside his skin.

~~~

“So how does it feel, living in a joint that has more bugs in its walls than the Cockroach Inn?”

Maria sighed, settling into the other end of the sofa. It was long enough they could both lounge with their feet stretched out, facing each other, backs against the puffy white arm rests. “Infested,” she said glumly. “Like he’s under my skin, inside my head, gnawing at the wiring.”

“He’s not the only one under your skin, dearie, huh?”

“Don’t start, Cath.”

“I’ve got you under my skin. I’ve got you deep in the heart of me…” Cathy crooned.

“Don’t be such a brat!”

“So deep in my heart you’re really a part of me. I’ve got you under my skin.”

“Anyone ever tell you you’ve got a voice like a strangled chicken?”

“Well, I suppose I don’t have a reason to trill quite so… um… melodiously as you. Romance really does add a seductive timbre to the human voice, especially the female voice, don’t you think?”

“Oh, shut up and stop behaving like a snotty little sister.”

“You wouldn’t be so short with me if you knew what I do about your paramour.”

“Paramour?”

“Well, maybe that’s a tad premature. But I don’t doubt for a second that he wants to be.”

“For God’s sake, Cath! What’s got into you? And what is this juicy tidbit you’re dangling?”

“I’ve been checking in with Dr. Google and he’s yielded quite a bit about our dear friend Victor. I’m surprised you haven’t done the same. Aside from being the city’s most highly sought after Family Court lawyer, he’s also…”

“A photographer…”

“‘An underground photo artist of superlative genius,’ is how one of his enthralled reviewers put it. ‘An iconoclast of prim and proper fashion. A hiker of Victorian skirts.’ Don’t know why I’ve never heard of him till now—after all, I am a devotee of the photo arts.”

“I already told you about his photography,” Maria frowned. “This isn’t news.”

“Maybe not, but take a look at this.” Cathy fumbled in her jeans pocket, extracted her mobile, thumbed the keys eagerly, and handed the phone over to Maria.

Daly exhibit to cross legal, moral Rubicons

Photo artist Victor Daly, whose day job is Family Court lawyer for the rich and famous of Vancouver, is going to put it all on the line next month with an exhibit titled Inside Out, which promises to ‘break new artistic and moral ground’, skirting dangerously close to breaking a few prudish laws in the process. 

Daly intertwines theatre and art in both the creation and display of his imagery. His shows are ephemeral installations, best appreciated on opening night. To see them in the absence of the launch shenanigans is like looking at coral on a mantle —the structure is there, it’s compelling and beautiful in its own right, but you know something is missing. It’s become a record of fecund, pulsing life; but not the life itself.

In short, it’s an opening not to be missed.

I can’t say this without sounding kinky, but a Daly exhibit forces you to wonder how everyone around you would look in the buff. It’s nudist down to its transparent undies and beyond, even though everyone in attendance—up to now—has been allowed to keep their knickers on. The truly terrifying crisis his art provokes takes place on opening nights, when the gathered celebrants are looking not only at the photos and the installation enactments, but at each other as well—everyone’s a potentially stripped down prince or princess strutting about in invisible clothes—if you catch my meaning. It’s weird.

This is not voyeurism or anything even close to pornography. In his ‘environments’ you want to connect with your fellow beings, break down the barriers convention imposes. You want to ‘go native’, so to speak.

Inside Out will push this aspect of his work beyond the bounds of what is socially acceptable, Daly promises. He wants to dismantle the ‘community standards’ that are used as a rationale for censoring erotic works, confining them within polite limits. Not to put too fine a point on it, he intends to deliberately break the mold, challenging our notions of what’s obscene and what’s art. It’s a delicate dance for someone in his profession!

Enticingly leaked word has it this show will feature his subjects on the wall and in the flesh. Models, who have been collaborating with Daly on this work, will perform ‘a ballet of sexual acts’ as Daly puts it. ‘They will become living projections of the two-dimensional representations all around them.’

He plans to mount this exhibit in two spaces. The first gallery he envisions as a ‘sexual decompression chamber’, where our inhibitions will be incrementally ‘absolved’. The photographs will be a sort of surround for video representations of erotica, the camera zooming in close, giving the surfaces of flesh what he calls a ‘geographical aspect’.

He who dares cross the threshold into Gallery Two—and it is the patriarchal branch of the species that will be most threatened by this sensual Rubicon—will witness the live performance. Whether you interpret the models’ acts as dance, striptease or gross indecency will depend to some degree upon who you are, I suppose, and how well Daly and his partners choreograph their sexual theatrics…

Maria stared at the screen. A part of her couldn’t comprehend. The photographs on Victor’s walls had struck her as elegant abstractions, but this went farther, way farther, its implications skewing the memory of what she’d already seen in his works… of things seen and experienced before she’d even met Victor Daly.

An artist can’t give me permission to witness these things… she balked.

“Where’s he coming from with all this, Cath?”

Cathy shrugged. “You’ll have to ask him, hon. The best I can do is describe how his work affects me.”

“So?” Maria prodded.

“He’s a social iconoclast, fixated on sexual norms.”

“Isn’t that just a fancy way of saying he’s a sexual deviant?”

“No! You’ve been entranced by his photographs. They’re gorgeous representations of human spirit in the flesh. That’s his point. He’s not the deviant; the rest of us are. That tribe I call the ‘old men in robes’ are the perverts, Mar.”

Maria crossed her arms and frowned.

“I’ll have him if you won’t,” Cathy prodded.

“Am I such a prude?”

“No. And I really hope I didn’t damage anything by showing you that. Just thought you should know, is all. Thought I’d buffer the shock so nothing actually gets broken when you’re invited to the gala.”

“There’s nothing to break. Victor and I are not an ‘item’. Our relationship is professional, period. Has to be.”

Cathy raised her eyebrows, but clamped her mouth shut for once.

~~~

Maria, Aaron, Laurence, Cathy, PI Pirelli… Crystal Doer…

Crystal Doer?

He hadn’t known any of these people a few weeks ago; now they crowded his thoughts.

Victor closed his eyes, relaxed, repositioning himself on the mattress, trying to sleep.

“Crystal Doer?”

She drew closer to his realm of consciousness, a shadow taking shape within the darkened room. He half expected her to materialize in the midair between him and the billowing curtains, or to hear her voice threaded into the night sounds of the city.

Could she be alive? Out there, after all these years?

Her parents still hoped so. She’s run away, they kept telling themselves. Someday she would come to terms with her demons, then she’ll come home.

She’ll phone from a town at the end of a long dirt road where the nightly entertainment is watching the Northern Lights. “Mom!” she’ll say. “Dad! Can you forgive me?” And they won’t even say a word. They’ll just cry, longing to hold their babe in their arms, to splice together the severed ligaments of their crippled lives.

Yeah, and now for the sappy music and credits, Victor sneered…

You cannot have a name! she said.

“What?” he bolted upright.

The voice had no locus. It simply materialized inside and outside him at one and the same instant.

He says you can’t. So I’m going to call you Emanon—noname in reverse—because if you say something backward it makes no sense, yet it exists. I’ll still be obeying, but I will have a sound that means you and ‘not you’ at the same time.

Do you understand?

If I even thought of a name like Billy or Jack, he’d know it. Even thinking about thinking it is dangerous. He senses disobedience the same way a hyena sniffs out molecules of sweat. You must never reveal your secret no-name to him. He’ll beat me and you within an inch of our lives if he ever finds out.

“Who is he?”

She didn’t answer. Her spirit faded, a weak signal obscured by the shifting electromagnetism of the city.

“Who is he?” Victor shouted after her, but she was gone.

He stared into the misshapen gloom of his living room. Am I going crazy? Had he become a medium for the long-lost spirit of Crystal Doer? Was he infatuated with a decades old photo of a dead girl?

Victor kicked the sheets away, freeing himself from their tangles and rolling out of bed. The room had become a locus of insanity, a place where reason wobbled, flew apart, the shrapnel of what had been tearing into the gauzy fabric of reality. He wrapped himself in his housecoat and padded down the hall. The inky well of False Creek, its shores encrusted with the garish phosphorescence of the city, came into view through his patio window. He stared down at his chosen world. At first nothing seemed out of place. Granville Island, the Granville Street Bridge, Burrard Bridge, all the meaningful structures that triangulated his sense of who and where he was remained in place. But…

You’re out there, aren’t you?

Crystal didn’t respond. Quiescent now, she’d become a presence perfectly merged into the dark interstices of his universe. When you speak, you become a point of absolute being; but your silence is everywhere.

He’d never thought such a thing, this connection to a certainty beyond belief. Crystal Doer’s spirit had broken free from the black holes of time and space, and he was the only human being in the universe equipped to pick up the irregular pulse of her background signal. She cried out for…

“Justice,” he pronounced, aware of the sliding door’s glass vibrating in harmony to the word. The world as he knew it was imploding, everything bending and buckling under the influence of an irrational new gravity.

“This is fucking crazy.”

Next: Lawyer-client relations