The Laughing Falcon (2 page)

Brod wanted a different image for the Christmas push. “Instead of my ugly mug, I was thinking about using a hockey star. Saskatchewan boy, like Hit Man Hogan on the Ducks.”

“That would cost scads. You’d be better off spending it on more air time. You’ve no idea how telegenic you are.” She bit her tongue.

“You think so? I’ve been getting some feedback from my wife. She says I can’t do the soft sell; it just don’t sound like the real me.”

“Ever thought a more sincere approach might work better?”

“Yeah, like what?”

“Hi, folks, my name is Brod Kipling, and I’m a used car dealer. Now, I know most of you have heard the fancy expression ‘pre-owned vehicles,’ but I talk straight, and I give the straight goods – there, you come across as honest; that’s what you have to overcome: the common belief car salesmen are a little shady.”

“Okay, write me up something sincere like that.”

Maggie hated this job.

Just before seven, Maggie joined the CSKN staff in the main studio, where everyone was waiting for the news to wrap and the party to get underway. “And that does it for Friday, December eleventh,” said Roland Davidson, the agonizingly handsome news anchor. His gaffe seemed to go unnoticed: right day, wrong date. It was the twelfth.

He turned to Frieda Lisieux for some hour-ending happy talk. “Going to any Christmas parties this weekend, Frieda?”

She hesitated, as if unsure how to answer. The weather–person, if she held to previous form, would party with gusto as soon as the news-sports-and-weather team uttered its final banality to the wasteland.

“I think I’ll just curl up with a good book,” Frieda chirruped. Maggie almost gagged: first, you have to learn to read.

“Good way to stay out of trouble.” Roland turned to Art Wolsely, whose wavy toupee seemed unusually lopsided this evening. “Big game for the Blades tonight. Going to be there?”

“Yep, I sure am –”

Roland, glancing at the clock, sliced Art off. “Have a good weekend and, folks,
please
drive safely.” His words flowed like warm corn syrup down a stack of pancakes.

Credits roll, voices off, a wide shot of the
Eye on the City
team smiling fondly at each other, their lips moving soundlessly, Roland tidying his stack of news copy. An arm chops the air, the harsh lights dim, and Frieda explodes. “What do you mean, good way to stay out of trouble? You make it sound like I have a reputation.”

“At least you didn’t get a fucking cork stuffed down your throat halfway through a sentence.” Art Wolsely snapped off his clip-on tie and made his way to
The Happy Homemaker
set and its self-help bar.

Roland was engaged now with the station manager, who was saying something about him “screwing up again” – obviously over the date miscue. Maggie wondered if his career was littered with a history of similar fox paws (as her mother would put it), offences for which he had been sentenced to Saskatoon.

He caught her eye: a wan smile. Maggie felt … what?
Fiona felt a curiously erotic tingling
. Not quite; more a sensation of prickles. She smiled back, remembered not to slouch. He had not spoken more than ten words to her in the three weeks since he transferred from the network’s Montreal station. He was said to be married, but no one had seen his wife; maybe she had remained behind.

Frieda Lisieux, like a nectar-laden flower, had gathered several hummingbirds about her while drifting casually toward the sprig of mistletoe above the control room door. What lucky fellow would deposit his pollen on the stigma of her poinciana tonight? The personnel director, maybe, or the comptroller or one of the lusty camera operators?

Maggie sensed liaisons were subtly being made, and felt lonely. She fled to a haven behind the Christmas tree, lit with strands of chili lights, red and green, tiny flaccid penises.

“We’ve never been formally introduced. Roland Davidson.”

Startled, she whirled in a half-circle, losing her balance and nearly knocking the drink from his hand.
I’m Maggie Klutz, such a pleasure to meet you
. Recovering, determined not to appear shy, she offered a firm, unwavering grip.

“Margaret Schneider. Maggie.”

He held her hand for slightly longer than etiquette required. An unruly lock of hair had come unstuck, curling down his forehead and spoiling his perfectly-in-place image; she wanted to brush it back.

She erupted in mindless chatter, like Frieda filling the space between news and commercials. Yes, she was in advertising, she had been with the station three years but writing fiction was her passion, she had published four paperbacks, though they were maybe not his cup of tea, and she was taking holidays starting tomorrow, off to Costa Rica on some horrible late-arriving flight. An amiable discussion about her fear of flying was followed by this:

“Would you be interested in getting together, Maggie, if you have some time later?”

“You mean tonight?” Why was he seeking this social engagement?

To that unasked question came an improbable answer: “When our eyes met, I … I don’t know, I felt a kind of connection.”

That seemed to come from the outer limits of corniness; she wondered if he was joking. “I can’t stay up late.”

They met at a dark downtown lounge. A “quick one,” Maggie had stressed, blushing then, concerned he might read an improper innuendo in the phrase. The quick one had turned into two; his were doubles.

She tried to persuade herself she was not playing the role of Christmas party pickup.
I felt a kind of connection
. Well, sometimes it happened: one suddenly, mysteriously, clicked with another person. She had written often enough about the blinding flash that mesmerizes her heroines but had felt nothing remotely so profound with Roland.

What were the rules of engagement here? No affairs with married men, she told herself. He had mentioned, with a weary shrug, some “personal problems.” Was he separated? Did not that bring a liaison within permissible bounds?

“So tell me about these problems.”

“I think my wife and I are splitting up.”

“You think.”

“I … I’m not ready to talk about it. Too crowded here.” He looked searchingly through the lenses of her spectacles. “Do you have a place where we could talk?”

“Yes, but … I’m not sure about this.”

“Why don’t you take those glasses off for a second?”

She took them from her face, and he blurred around the edges.

“Your eyes are very attractive.”

“I can’t use contacts. If you’re not five feet in front of me, I can hardly make you out.”

“We could always get closer than that.”

She put her glasses back on. “Is your wife at home?”

“She’s not expecting me till late.”

“Kids?”

He hesitated. “Two boys.”

“Did you do this a lot in Montreal?”

“What?”

“Fool around on your wife.”

“Is that what you think this is?”

“That’s what I know this is.”

Maggie braved the wind tunnel between her mother’s house and the neighbour’s, entering by the back door. Beverley was in the kitchen rolling dough for cinnamon buns; she was still shapely at fifty-six, though tending to a thickness of hip. Maggie inherited her skinny genes from her father.

“Well, here’s Maggie now.” The cordless phone was crooked between Beverley’s shoulder and ear: the walkie-talkie, she called it. “She’s off to some little dictatorship in Central America that is probably owned by the drug lords and full of thieves and addicts. I don’t know why she can’t go to Hawaii.” She put her hand over the mouthpiece. “You’re not going to make it for Christmas at the farm?”

“Tell her, sorry, I get back on Boxing Day.”

Beverley was talking to Aunt Ruthilda, long-distance to the family farm near Lake Lenore. The name of Maggie’s hometown hinted of pastoral charm, but Lenore was a typical prairie town. The Schneiders and the Tsarchikoffs – one set of grandparents German, the other Doukhobor – had farmed there for three generations; mostly wheat, a quarter-section of canola, some milk cows and chickens.

Maggie rolled up her sleeves, washed her hands, and took over the rolling pin as Beverley wandered about the kitchen armed with phone, cigarette, and cup of coffee.

“No, I’ll come as long as Woodrow isn’t there. And how is Woody and his mid-term crisis?”

“Mid-life, Mother.”

“Mid-life. Whatever.”

Maggie watched Beverley’s expression cloud, as it did whenever the topic of Maggie’s father arose. Two years ago, Beverley had won an order ousting him from the farm, then had moved to the city herself, leaving Maggie’s three older brothers to work the two and a half sections with Aunt Ruthilda and Uncle Ralph. Woody was staying on in Lenore,
managing the lumberyard and living with the waitress who caused the breakup, a brainless frowzy, to use her mother’s term. She meant floozy.

“Uh-huh. I’m not surprised.” Beverley’s face lightened. “Well, it’s poetic licence.” She hung up with a flourish of satisfaction.

“Poetic justice, Mom.” In her compositional struggles, Maggie tried studiously to avoid malapropisms and mixed metaphors, concerned that they were traits subject to inheritance; her proneness to misplaced modifiers was burden enough. “So it didn’t last.”

“No, dear, it didn’t. His little cupcake up and left him after he tried to make out with the Co-op manager’s wife. I wouldn’t take him back if he came crawling on his behind.”

“I had a truly syrupy come-on last night from a married man, the news announcer; you’ve probably seen him on the tube. It was flattering in a way – he’s very handsome.”

“You didn’t go to bed with him or anything?”

“Are you kidding? He was so transparent it was like talking through a pane of glass.” Why did only married men come on to her? She must be giving off a scent to these hunters – of desperation and weakened resistance, a willingness to surrender after the niceties of protest were mouthed.

She was saving herself for Jacques. She would meet him, bronzed and flat-bellied, on a wave-battered beach. A Frenchman of culture, soldierly, tortured with the pain of forsaken love. Then she realized how trite that sounded: M. Jacques Cliché.

“Darling?”

“Sorry?” Maggie took a moment to flutter back to reality.

“I asked, are you all packed?”

“My gear’s in the car.” She had no intention of loading herself down with more than a flight bag, backpack, and camera case – her telescopic lens had set her back two weeks’ wages. “By the way, Mom, Costa Rica is not a dictatorship. It’s
one of the oldest democracies in the hemisphere. They abolished their army five decades ago. They call it the Switzerland of the Americas.”

“Tell me about it when you come home with malaria.”

Maggie cut a grapefruit in half. “They have good health care. They spend on medicare and education instead of guns and soldiers.” She had garnered these facts from a guidebook,
Key to Costa Rica
.

“I suppose that’s all you’re going to eat.”

“I’ll be lucky to hold that down.” Rooted to the prairie gumbo by her flying phobia, Maggie had never travelled south of Yellowstone Park.

“So do you think you’ll find any vegetarian restaurants in this tropical paradise that you think is so perfect even though you don’t know anyone who’s ever been there?”

“The staple is rice and beans, all the nutrition you need. And while we’re on the topic of health, do you have to smoke that thing right down to the filter?”

Beverley butted out. “I hope you brought another set of specs. Or you’ll be stumbling around the jungle blind as an ostrich.”

“I brought extra glasses and ostriches aren’t blind. I want you to get me to the airport in plenty of time, Mom, so I can compose myself.” Outside, the birch trees were bending helplessly to the wind. Obviously the airline would cancel if the weather did not improve.

From a pay phone in the departure lounge, Maggie called Woodrow at Lenore Lumber and Feed; he sounded depressed.

“The whole family’s against me, even the boys. When I go out to the farm, Ruthilda looks at me like I just tramped manure in the house. Felt like sleeping in the barn with the stock.”

“Darn it, Dad, you’re the scandal of Lake Lenore.”

“Oh, I suppose Beverley’s just clicking her heels in glee. She was right, I lasted exactly two years with Codette. Okay, I was
stupid. I deserve not to go to Ruthilda’s Christmas dinner, though everyone and his dog is going, including Beverley.” After a long, morose sigh, he said, “I don’t suppose she wants to talk to me.”

“Not if you come crawling on your behind, she said, for which you’d have to be a contortionist.”

“Look, this is the thing, Maggie, I …” He grappled for words.

“What is the thing, Dad?”

“I’ve decided I … I miss our life together.”

“Maybe you should explain that to her.”

She told him to start off with a heartfelt apology; if he promised to do that she would attempt some romance-writer patching when she returned.

Her flight was being called, to Minneapolis and Miami, connecting there with an airline called LACSA. “Got to go, Dad. Love you.”

Maggie steeled herself and marched forward to seat IIF, right above the maw of one of those jet engines that have been known to explode in flames. Outside, a buffeting wind was sending whirlwinds of snow across the tarmac. Dr. Vicky Rajwani had given her a catalogue of helpful hints: relax and sit calmly, engage your seatmate if possible, but most important, think positive. Repeat after me: Flying is a wonderful way to travel …

Dr. Rajwani, who had taught Maggie self-hypnosis, had described her phobia as “unusual in its context.” Maggie was not claustrophobic, not afraid of heights. If anything, she was abnormally well adjusted, upbeat, adventurous, an outdoors person. Positive thinking was in her very nature, said Dr. Rajwani. (Maggie Poppins: that is what her mother used to call her.)

The aircraft was not moving. Were they having second thoughts? A voice of doom crackled from the speakers. “Ah, this is Captain Webb. Sorry for the delay. Just a little glitch with
the panel lights here. Should be off in about two minutes.”