Whipped: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel(104)
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It was May 19, the Saturday of the long weekend. The fine weather had held. Margaret had arrived, and was in a teasing, sprightly mood, having bounced back from the stresses and strains of last year. Arthur noticed more grey hairs, but somehow she seemed younger.
They were watching Dog, their odd-jobs man, split fence railings from a pile of cedar logs. “Going to watch that sexy movie tonight?” Margaret asked.
“No, ma’am. Jesus says put away sinful things.” He went back to work. Fully recovered from the Transformers, Dog’s spiritual needs were currently being met by the island’s Pentecostals.
Margaret has maintained her upbeat humour despite the backtracking of Marcus Yates over the Coast Mountains Pipeline. Faced with the threat of a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit, the Liberal government had reopened negotiations, practically capitulated. “It didn’t take long for these gutless mice to drop the mask of being oh-so-environmentally friendly,” she’d proclaimed at a crowded press conference. Happily, she’d lost none of her old vigour.
Less chipper was Emil Farquist, who had been notoriously absent from his seat in the House of Commons but apparently not from the barstools of various Ottawa alehouses. Arthur had seen that coming, the descent into alcoholism, and actually felt for him. It was easy to forgive now.
Margaret and Arthur walked to the grassy outlook at Blunder Point to join Niko and Yoki, who had invited them for a picnic lunch of salmon sushi. A welcoming event for Margaret, who hugged them before settling onto their blanket.
Arthur wandered to the shoreline, checking out the postcard view of the islet-spangled Salish Sea and the distant, towering Olympic Mountains. He was enjoying his day, pleased with Margaret’s mischievous mood, and — he had to admit — still shamelessly revelling in his role as her Prince Lancelot.
On his return to the picnic, Yoki and Niko were urging Margaret to join them to watch a “most very hot movie tonight.” All week the pair had barely been able to contain their excitement over this Hollywood premiere.
“Too sexy for Arthur,” said Niko. “He say wild horses can’t make him come.”
Margaret tried the sushi. “So fresh and tasty. You ladies should open a restaurant.” She squinted in thought. “You know what, Arthur? I think we should go.”
“Oh, please, darling. Watching things go sideways during group therapy?”
“Maybe they mean grope therapy. It could be funny. Front-row seats, we can’t disappoint Mookie.”
Don’t lay anything on, she’d said. What happened to that plan? “If it stinks, I would be embarrassed for Mookie.” Another reason, which he dared not express, was that there could indeed be explicit scenes, and they might incapacitate him in the marital bed tonight. Others might be invigorated, but not Arthur.
“Just for a lark, Arthur. And we really should pop in to her after-party. We’ll have two full days to recover.”
Arthur felt trapped. Later, he would remind Margaret she had goaded him into this. He imposed a condition: Yoki and Niko would get the reserved seats. He preferred to be at the back for a quick exit.
HAPPY ENDING
Lou was hunkered down over his keyboard in his home office, tapping out the final pages of the first draft of Whipped, a memoir by a mild-mannered reporter who, while being stalked by the Mafia, stumbled on an explosive secret about the sex games of a high minister of state, a secret now revealed in these pages . . .
That’s what his publisher planned for the jacket copy. Something like that, anyway, maybe with a line about his epic take-down of the pedophile. The opening chapter would be a grabber, his near-death experience when drive-by shooters whacked his snowman. Then slide back in time to set that up, his digging into the Waterfrontgate scandal, the exposé, its repercussions.
Then to the abysmal life of a supposedly protected witness. Being rendered economically redundant by that dipshit Hugh Dexter. Nothing was being withheld. The love of his life regarding him as a twerp, a worm. His family taking off. Bring out the hankies, folks.
Part Two would introduce Svetlana Glinka. “You, the reporter, come.” Lou goggling at her recorded whipping of her bare-assed bronco. “I helped him through it, the back-stabbing shit.” Part Three: his lonely odyssey in search of his family. Part Four: a happy ending.
The publicist at his house had come up with a piss-cutter of a brainwave: advance review copies of Whipped would be parcelled with a small USB drive of the video.
There would be photographs, mostly culled from the press, some from Francisco Sierra: the decapitated snowman; the spiralling staircases of Rue de la Visitation; Svetlana in her sex shop in Nice; Lou waist-deep in Lac Osisko fending off a snarling schnauzer — he’d been too frazzled to see his father-in-law pointing a camera.
Whipped would be dedicated to Celeste, of course. She no longer called him a worm. She was the proud wife of Calgary’s Citizen of the Year. All eyes had been on her at the Governor General’s reception, in the stunning outfit she’d created.
Lou was relieved that she and the kids had adjusted so easily to life in Porcupine Plain, the only snag being Lisa falling in love with the neighbour’s pony. Now she wanted her own. And maybe that could happen — if Lou could swing a deal on the two-acre pasture next door. The Sabatinos now had title to their snug brick house, the advance for his book more than covering the down payment.