Heroes (14 page)

“You want another, the bottle's in the cupboard,” Gloria said. “Help yourself.”

“Thanks, no, I'm just going to finish this up and I'll be on my way,” Bayle said, holding up his glass and the inch and a half of bourbon that remained in it as some sort of evidence that he really was almost done with his drink and really would soon be going.

Gloria took a sip of tea and turned her attention to the the room-permeating Bach. Bayle attempted to fill in the time it took him to finish up his drink by similarly disappearing inside the music, but was not nearly as successful. Classical or classic rock, song had never been that undefinable something capable of soothing Bayle's occasionally savage breast.

It was one of the first disinterests Jane and he had discovered they shared in common. Over drinks on their phone-arranged first date — at the top of the T.D. Tower, Jane's choice, dry martinis and a fifty-fourth-floor view — somehow over the course of the evening Bayle had come to disclose how at the pitch of his sister's brief fling with bebop jazz she'd taped to the front of her bedroom door a quote she'd found in one of his German philosophy textbooks, “Life without music would be a mistake.” Jane immediately replied that since she and Bayle did not care for music and, at the same time, she found it hard to see at least her own life as a mistake, the statement was obviously false. Bayle attempted to gently defend Patty by saying that he thought she'd meant it not so much as an unqualified truth claim but more as an overall attitude toward life. Jane said that in that case it sounded like his sister had a lot to learn about life.

In the few seconds it took for a passing jet to move out of their shared sightline Bayle quickly considered just what the fuck he was doing drinking a fucking martini and who the fuck this pretentious yuppie germalist was to say his sister had
a lot to learn about life.

But by the time all that remained of the departed airplane was the exhausted trailing phantom of its plane self, Bayle had willed a return to his outwardly amicable first-date manner. In time, several more drinks, a shared taxi ride back to Jane's place, and mutually satisfying intercourse — orgasms effectively achieved on both sides — were all accomplished without incident.

Bayle thumb-tapped a simple, repetitive beat on Davidson's tabletop altogether antithetical to the twisting melodies of Gould's rendering of Bach's
Goldberg Variations
. Spying the room for some kind of distraction, he was slightly startled to be reminded of Davidson's drowsing presence. A thin string of bubbling saliva had begun to spider down the right side of the journalist's mouth.

“Are you sure we shouldn't do something for him?” Bayle said.

“What do you suggest we do?” Gloria answered. Leaning against the kitchen counter, she held her cup of tea in both hands in front of her face, softly blowing away the rising steam. An almost smile crept over the lip of the cup.

“I don't know, but ....”

A raised eyebrow; a sip of tea.

“But
something
. Are you telling me that this” — Bayle gestured toward the drooling Davidson — “doesn't bother you?”

“I didn't say that.”

“Well, then?”

“Well, then, what?”

“If it bothers you so much, why don't you do something about it?”

“Now we're back where we started. What exactly do you suggest we do?”

Bayle picked up his glass, took a long, final drink, and emptied it. He looked at Davidson then back at Gloria. Since they'd arrived at Davidson's place she'd changed into an oversized man's black sweater and a pair of loose grey track shorts, no socks. Standing there in front of him with legs
crossed, naked foot over naked foot, Bayle couldn't help but notice the sharp lines of muscle through her skater's thighs and calves, the here and there shoots of pulsing blue veins.

“I've got to go,” he said. “I'm doing an interview with Duceeder at 1:30 tomorrow and I'll be lucky to get six hours sleep as it is.” He stood up from the table and looked at Davidson again. “Tell Harry thanks for the drink. I'll see myself out.”

“You're giving up that easy?” Gloria said.

“What?”

“It's just that it seems like, what with you so concerned about Harry and all, you might want to stick around and, you know, try to do
something
.”

“I guess I came to the conclusion that that would probably be more your job than mine.”

“And how do you figure that?”

“Well, you're his girlfriend, right? Maybe you should keep a little shorter leash on him. You might want to try and get him to cut back a little on the booze, for starters. You also might discourage him from bringing back guests to his house after the bars close down. I'm sure I'm not the first person to take advantage of Harry's hospitality.”

As if testing out the idea aloud, “You think I should tell Harry not to drink anymore,” Gloria said matter-of-factly. She went to the stove to top off her cup.

“Does that sound like such a bad idea to you?” Bayle said. “Look at him. Do you think that the amount of drinking he does is somehow good for him?” Bayle set his laptop down on the floor.

“It's not that,” Gloria said. “It's just that I'm a little bit confused about what I'm supposed to be telling him to do instead.”

“Instead of what?” Bayle said.

“Instead of drinking.”

Gloria slowly steeped her tea bag in her cup and watched Bayle's face.

Bayle threw up his hands. “Fine. Whatever. Whatever works for the two of you. I've got three days left in this
crummy little town and then I get on with my real life. Believe me, a year from now I'll be in my little office at St. Jerome's quietly doling out As, Bs, and Cs, and the last thing that'll be on my mind will be Harry Davidson's drinking problem.” He picked up his computer by the handle. “Like I said, tell Harry thanks for the drink. I plan to be pretty busy for the next couple of days, so if I don't manage to see him again before I leave town, let Harry know it's been a pleasure and that I was sorry to hear about him and the team.”

Gloria stiffened to attention. “What do you mean you're sorry about him and the team?”

“About the boycott,” Bayle said.

“What boycott?”

“Harry didn't tell you?”

“We don't talk about each other's work. What boycott?”

Bayle looked at the clock hanging on the wall over the stove. “Look, it's nearly three and I've got to be up by eleven for my interview. I should start walking right now if I want to get to sleep before five. I'm sure Harry'll tell you all about it in the morning. I'd appreciate it if you could just point me in the direction of Main.”

“I'm gonna drive you home and you're gonna tell me all that you know about this boycott business,” Gloria said. “Tonight.”

“Look, it's late, I can walk,” Bayle said.

“Nobody's doubting the fact that you can walk, but right now you're getting a ride home in my car. Let me get my keys.”

Still in Davidson's driveway, Gloria's well-travelled yellow Volkswagen Bug taking its time deciding whether or not it wanted to run, Bayle turned on the radio and flipped to AM 590, WUUS, in the hope of catching the tale end of the I.M. Wright show and coming at least a little bit closer to understanding his inexplicable hold upon the local populace. Maybe it's like Hegel, he considered, no one really believing a word of what he says, but people continuing to read him faithfully anyway just because it's fun trying to figure out what the hell he was talking about.

The car finally coughing and shaking to her satisfaction, Gloria snapped off the radio.

“I'd appreciate it if I could just listen to this for a couple of minutes,” Bayle said. “It's sort of like a hobby for me.”

“You start talking,” Gloria said, putting the car in gear, the radio staying off. “And you go nice and slow now and tell me all about this boycott. You can listen to that foolishness some other time. Right now, we've got more important things to discuss.”

N
OT QUITE
sobered up enough yet to be technically hungover, hatless and not the umbrella sort, Bayle clanked two quarters into the newspaper box next to the bus stop near The Range in search of cheap cover. A hard, warm rain set the tone for the 1:30 interview with Duceeder he was late for.

Newspaper folded in two, halo-like over his head, the bus hissed to a stop in front of him, door opening inward as it was still slowing down.

“You live in a cave or something?” the driver said. “They've been calling for this rain for nearly two days now.”

“I didn't get a chance to look at the paper yesterday,” Bayle said, steeping up and dripping into the bus. “Busy. Working. You know.”

The driver cranked the door closed behind him and shifted into gear. Looking in the round mirror hanging above his head at the image of Bayle with his pimple-provoked red honker head-back applying his eye drops, “Looks like you had a busy night,” he said. “Busy, working, I mean. You know.”

Bayle blinked several times like the pharmacist had instructed him to and briefly considered whether he could possibly look as bad as he felt. Fuzzy teeth. Sour stomach. Mushy head. Not a chance.

“What line of work you in again?” the driver asked.

“Journalism. For the next seventy-two hours, journalism.”

“You write for the local paper, do you?” the driver said, looking again in the mirror suspended high over his seat.

“No. Out-of-town assignment.”

“That's good,” the driver said.

“Why's that?” Bayle said.

Windshield wipers flapping, drip, drip, drop after drop of rainwater fell off Bayle's nose and chin onto the front page of the unfolded
Eagle
lying across his knees.

“You haven't looked at your paper yet today, have you?” the driver said.

“No, actually the only reason I bought it was for ....”

Bayle's voice trailed off, eyes falling on today's headline — 6
INJURED AS EAGLE BUILDING IS ROCKED BY BOMB BLAST-Local Militia Group Claims Responsibility
— mind made quick to discover that C.A.C.A.W., Concerned and Armed Citizens for the American Way, had sent six
Eagle
staffers to the hospital late the night before because of its spread of “poisonous liberal lies,” Harry's articles about the
safety infractions at the Bunton Center arena a prime example of “anti-free-enterprise propaganda concocted by the socialist media.”

Bayle set the newspaper back down on his lap and stared out the bus window. Football-field-sized puddles swelled the surrounding farmland with more of the steady afternoon rain. A farmer in overalls and a Warriors baseball cap stood with arms crossed underneath the awning of his porch watching the afternoon traffic and a full day of plowing pass him by. The small advertising board sitting in the middle of the muddy front lawn of a U-Haul company promised free coffee and friendly service. Three cows in a small fenced-in field chewed their cud, ignoring the sound of the passing bus. Bayle looked down at the paper again, the violence of the headline he read over and over utterly belied by the simple scenes outside his window that were all that he could see.

Bomb blast. Building is rocked by bomb blast.

Giving or taking a few minutes, one hour later last night and he might have been one of the injured. Or worse.

Undergoing the sort of earnest existential stock-taking that the falling of the Canadian dollar or a fierce winter wind coming off Lake Ontario never could have inspired, Bomb blast, Bayle thought. Building is rocked by bomb blast. One hour later last night and maybe me no more, he thought. Me no more. Me. No more. Me. No.

“Okay.”

Bayle looked up. “Okay?”

“Okay, this is your stop,” the driver said. The bus was idling in front of the arena entrance.

“Sorry, I ....” Bayle gathered up his newspaper and folders of notes and shambled toward the bus's front exit.

The driver rested his hand on the handle to the closed door, looked Bayle up and down. “You all right?”

“Yeah, thanks,” Bayle said. “Just ... yeah, I'm fine, I'm fine.” He rubbed his pimple-inflamed nose; winced.

“Maybe you shouldn't be working so much.”

“I'm fine, really, believe me.”

“Don't worry about me,” the bus driver said. “You're the only one you've got to convince of that.” He pulled open the bus door. Rain pounded against the walkway in front of the arena so hard it bounced straight back up.

“It's still raining,” Bayle said.

“It never stopped.”

H
E MANAGED
to get the information he came for.

For thirty minutes Bayle kept his head lowered to the notepad on his knee, writing down everything Duceeder said about the necessity of educating the public in a non-traditional hockey market about the very rudiments of the game itself. Every time he felt his attention to the task at hand begin to waver, his mind a messy montage of the
Eagle
cover shot of the bomb blast, Davidson's pathetically drooling snoozing, even Duceeder's own fax-denying smirking face of the night before, Bayle told himself to keep his eye on the puck. Get the quotes, do the article, go home, get the doctorate, get the job, get the girl, get a life.

Duceeder's voice filtered back into consciousness. Bayle patted his suit jacket where he kept Smith's folded fax. He pressed his pen harder to the page. Keep your eye on the puck, Bayle.

“Take our fifth or sixth home game back in '88, our first season down here,” Davidson said. “One of our players gets his third goal of the game, the first hat trick in Warrior history. Naturally, somebody in the crowd who knows a bit about the game throws his hat onto the ice. Pretty straightforward stuff, right? Except that our security staff had been given strict guidelines before the season started about immediately removing anybody from the rink if they started acting up. You know, the usual stuff: fighting, drunken behaviour, throwing crap onto the ice, that sort of thing. So of course what does security do but run right down to row seven and cart this poor guy off, probably the only guy in the stands who knew what a hat trick was. And we just tossed him into the street on his behind like it was nobody's business. Anyway, we gave this fella free passes to the next five home games, a Warrior baseball hat, and the whole Warrior organization's sincerest apologies.”