Snow Job (5 page)

Out of principle, Margaret preferred to walk or take public transit, but used a leased Prius on occasions like this evening’s, one of their rare dinners together. The restaurant they were looking for was in downtown Hull — they’d dined well there once — but they couldn’t remember its name. Portuguese, informal, intimate.

They found a parkade and walked around, finally spotting the restaurant halfway down the block. “Pause for a moment, Arthur.” Margaret pretended interest in the offerings of a dress shop window. “I think we’re being followed. Don’t look.”

But Arthur did, without thinking, stepping around her and almost bumping into a tall man in a long black coat. Light brown hair, dark glasses. Spectral, sharp featured, gawky. “
Pardonnez-moi
,” Arthur said.

The stranger continued on in silence, then started shuffling across the street and was nearly hit by a swerving, shouting cyclist. “
Watche-toué!
” That persuaded him to remove his dark glasses before continuing to the opposite curb.

“He was behind me in a blue compact. He drove into the parkade just as we walked from it. I don’t know if he’s drunk or what.”

Arthur had picked up tobacco breath, but no alcohol. As they reached their restaurant, the man stopped at a well-lit brasserie directly across the street and studied the posted menu.

“Just one of those odd coincidences. He was going to that restaurant.”

Margaret didn’t seem so sure. “Works for the Alberta oil lobby. His assignment — get the dirt on Margaret Blake. I’m with my husband, you creepy idiot.”

The supposed spy took an outdoor table, lit a cigarette, donned wire-rim spectacles, looked quickly at them, then hid behind a menu.

Margaret asked the head waiter for a table by the window.

“With pleasure, Madame Blake, we are honoured.” He held her chair. “Madame will accept a complimentary champagne?” Arthur was Mr. Invisible.

To anyone but Arthur, a two-bedroom apartment with a sunset view over parkland and lake would be anything but a prison, but that’s how he’d come to see it. Before he’d made the great leap forward to Garibaldi, he’d been a city dweller, but on a capacious lot, with garden, lawn, and trees.

Now he was relegated to four pots of frostbitten gardenias on a balcony ten storeys above what soon would be a frozen wasteland. The half-century-old blocky building, befitting the suburbs of Moscow, was near Carleton University and full of noisy students. Apartment 10B was on loan to Margaret from a fervent Green, now a visiting professor at Oregon State.

“We can afford better,” he’d argued.

“We can’t disappoint him,” Margaret insisted.

Muffled rock and roll from the flat below, disjunctively married to an obscure Handel opera from 10C — one of a pair of grad students there was working on a thesis about the prolific composer.
On weekends, the squeaking-gate atonalities of her preadolescent violin students had Arthur rushing for earplugs.

Arthur watched the sun die over the Rideau Canal and the lake it fed, a wash of purple and pink. This was the day’s highlight.

He went in, slumped onto a hard sofa, fiddled with a book. He wasn’t used to reading the classics without a roaring fire of alder and fir. Instead, apartment 10B featured that most abhorrent of modern fixtures, an ersatz fireplace, flames flickering around imitation logs. He missed his old club chair that over the years had ungrudgingly accommodated itself to his former rangy shape. The joyous chores of bringing bounty from the land had burned the calories, and when he’d donned his robes for the occasional trial he’d been as fit as Spartacus, ready to take on the Roman legions.

Perhaps, he thought wishfully, some crisis had newly occurred at Blunder Bay that would demand his return. For instance, Stoney and McCoy jailed for packing Purple Passion into the Berlin-bound sculpture.

He was hesitant to call Zack and Savannah during evenings, he always seemed to be interrupting something: dinner, a quarrel, a meeting. They were forever holding meetings. Savannah picked up.

“I hope this isn’t a bad time.”

“Not at all,” she said, good natured, used to his fussy intrusions. “A few friends are over from Vancouver. Coastal Forest Coalition.”

He could hear loud conversation, sounding of more than a few friends. “Nothing to report, I take it?”

“No, everything’s going wonderfully. How’s Margaret?”

A little paranoid, he wanted to say. The klutz in the black coat had finished a wine, then wandered away without another look at them. “Splendid. Tireless in the struggle. Animals are well? The garden?”

“We’re eating from it. Everything is lovely, Arthur, we’re so glad to be here.”

Arthur found himself more depressed than ever. From the flat next door, a stagy roar: “I will never retire! I will never give way!”
Ibsen, Arthur suspected. The male partner of the Handel scholar was studying theatre, and could often be heard emoting through the thin walls.

C
lara Gracey told her driver to pump up the heat. Winter had come in late November with a frigid blast from somewhere north of Baffin Bay. But her prayer for a traffic-snarling snowfall hadn’t been answered, so she lacked a credible excuse for skipping tonight’s bash for the Bhashies.

The visitors, eight large, ruddy-faced males, had arrived yesterday on an old Ilyushin 62, trooping off in identical bear coats and bear hats. They were ready for the weather, unlike Clara, who hadn’t brought a sweater or jacket, just this flimsy coat. In the political life, fashion rules, style over comfort and warmth.

“I am on bended knees
begging
you to come, Clara,” Finnerty had said, smiling, avuncular. “This is their big farewell reception. You’re my first minister, they’ll take it as an insult. And what’ll it look like to the press?”

“There won’t be press. This is invitation only.”

“They’ll be outside, counting heads.”

Cabinet solidarity must prevail. It was Lafayette’s show anyway — he would carry the can if this disgusting love-in with these Mongol invaders went haywire. The red carpet he’d unfurled for them was a national humiliation. A colour guard! The governor general dragged from the sickbed to witness the signing of protocols. They’d been wined and dined, a stretch limo provided, a tour guide, interpreters, gifts of Inuit art and sterling silver embossed
with maple leaves. Bhashyistan’s gift, a yak from the personal herd of the Ultimate Leader, had also been in the Ilyushin, in the aft cargo area. That delightful interlude, the ceremonial unloading of the shitting yak, had been on all the newscasts. It was trucked off to an animal farm in Chibougamau.

Foreign Affairs had also arranged for an entire wing of suites in the Westin Hotel. Treasury wasn’t paying for these, thank God, or for the several street women who’d ended up there last night, according to RCMP watchers.

Clara cracked open a window and lit a cigarette. Her driver tuttutted, but he was used to it. Ice on the canal, a frozen slick. Bringing to mind Ms. Blake’s well-reported sound bite about oil slicks. And their champion, the slick foreign minister.

So much for Lafayette’s concept of educating these characters in the benefits of democracy. Only four showed up for the tour of Parliament yesterday. They’d sat in the Speaker’s Gallery for forty minutes, bored to numbness, then went shopping at the Rideau Centre. The Ilyushin was later observed being loaded with barbecues, dishwashers, and home theatres.

At least the sovereign state of Canada had not demeaned itself by apologizing for permitting twelve of its peons to acquit the alleged assassin of the Great Father, Boris Mukhamed Ivanovich. His son, Mad Igor, had named a planet after him. Mars was now known, in Bhashyistan, as Boris. Venus had been named after Boris’s second wife, Igor’s Revered Mother. It was now called Nanotchka.

A ceremony honouring the Great Father seemed to satisfy the Bhashies: expressions of deep regret, the laying of a wreath at the National War Memorial, another honour guard. Shameless. A
huge
demonstration outside the Centre Block today by a coalition of green NGOs abetted by the usual peaceniks and Amnesty Internationalists. One of nine such rallies across the country, a sizable crowd even in Calgary, outside the Alta International Tower.

This government was in peril. The thought of jumping ship,
returning to academia, continued to tempt Clara, but would be painful, a rebellion against five generations of party faithful. Her great-great-grandfather had served under Sir John A.

Clara summoned strength as they arrived at 99 Bush Street. The fifteenth-floor Rideau Club was a venerable institution restored from premises devoured by fire some decades ago. A lavish affair was promised, allegedly bankrolled by the Friends of Bhashyistan, an organization previously unheard of, likely slapped together for the occasion. Presumably Canada
had
some friends of Bhashyistan, even immigrants from there, but Clara had never met one.

There weren’t many on the Hill who doubted this was Alta International’s treat.

Somehow, Gerard Lafayette hadn’t expected the Bhashies to have a minister of culture, but here he was, in the Rideau Club’s dining salon, raising a glass. “To Canada, like patriotic song saying, glorious and free.” A throaty voice from a barrel chest. This was the tenth toast of the evening; these eight beefy, genial visitors were taking turns, some twice. Most had a smattering of English, with strong Russian accents.