been several weeks where I’d hardly breathed before finally passing my Wassermann test. Would Celeste fail the same? How many had she lain with so far tonight?
“How’re you feeling, honey?” solicited Celeste, in her best professional manner.
“Every day in every way I am getting better and better,” said I, and threw my Champagne glass into the fireplace.
She squealed, grabbed a bottle, and fell back in the chaise with me. Her face powder started smearing and I could see traces of cocaine around her nostrils. I put a wine-wetted fingertip to the drug and then placed my finger in her mouth and she looked at me as she suckled at it with her hot mouth and squirming tongue. A professional, indeed. I wanted to steal kisses with Laura again in the open yellow sightseeing trolley headed up the mountain in the spring sunshine. This one wouldn’t kiss. I could tell. With wine back in her mouth I asked about it.
“Some do,” she said, swallowing.
“Do you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“It’s unhygienic.”
BOB AND HIS WHORES staggered out of the room. I wondered what time it was. The lights were low and through the walls I heard a gramophone skipping.
“Pete!” I shouted at Jack across the distance between us, about five feet.
“What’s that, Sam?”
“Remember the Wolf?”
“The Wolf,” Jack said, and raised his glass, spilling fluid.
Jack’s blonde giggled and drank from a bottle’s neck.
“What happened in the woods?” I asked.
“Later,” he said.
“And what about tonight?”
“Worry not, my son.”
“I was going to leave. Take a train.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“No future in this,” I said.
“Not much.”
“What happened to us?” I asked.
“We got old.”
The door burst open. Bob being kicked backwards. The whores screamed. I pushed up from the cushions and woozed to my feet. Three men wearing suits and Mackintoshes forced their way in. Cops? Jack chucked a bottle and plonked the first man square between the eyes. The intruder dropped and his compatriot charged Bob and threw him against a wall. Bob in his shorts, his jacket in one hand, shoes in the other.
“Lousy fucking Frogs!” Bob shouted.
The Mackintosh hit by the bottle lay on the floor. Jack rushed the man pinning Bob to the wallpaper. Jack’s whore screamed and pointed: “Dot!”
Celeste looked at the third man in the doorway and her face fell in shock.
“No,” she mouthed.
The third man tensed for his move. I lurched at him and was met by his fist sinking into my gut. Down on my knees, I gasped and grabbed at his ankles, trying to pull him down. He kicked at my head but missed and stumbled onto his back. From behind Jack shoved me through the door. I stepped on my attacker’s soft groin and my heel glanced a live throat. Jack kicked and Bob staggered behind, trying to pull his gun from his jacket pocket while juggling his wardrobe.
“My pants...” he gestured.
“Bob, no,” Jack yelled, pushing the gun out of sight. “Go!”
Shouted curses chased us out. We blundered through the foyer and out onto the wet porch, pushing down the steps and trying to run at a pace. I gagged and retched. Jack held me up as we stumbled along. Bob swore.
“Cops?” I wheezed.
“Bob,” Jack growled.
“Those lousy fuckers,” said Bob.
WE ROLLED DOWN the street and turned left at Sherbrooke. Jack still had the money case of silver. My share was safe upon me. After a few blocks we came to the gates of the university and moved just inside the wall under the bare boughs of an oak. I lay in damp leaves, enveloped in the heavy odour of dirt and sweet decay, looking up at faraway stars visible behind breaking clouds above.
“Jesus, Bob. What the hell’d you do to them?”
“They were the ones came after me,” he protested, “just as I was getting started. They called me something and stuck their mitts on one of the girls.”
“Maybe they thought you were someone else,” I said.
“It could have been a divorce set-up gone wrong. Wrong room, wrong party,” Jack said. “Or a lover’s quarrel.”
“You need a motion passed in the Senate to get a divorce,” I said, unheeded.
The punch to my stomach had sobered me up properly and still throbbed. I remembered the look on Celeste’s face as she saw the third man. It was a lover’s quarrel and we’d been caught in the middle, our luck.
“Well, at least they weren’t coppers. But what’m I to do without my pants?” asked Bob.
“If anyone asks tell them you’re training for the Olympiad,” Jack said.
“Yeah, the hundred yard bum’s rush,” I said.
Bob gave me a dirty look.
“Go on home, Bob, and ring me in the morning,” said Jack. “Cut through the grounds here and no one’ll see you.”
The pair shook hands with a solemn formality. I was propped up against the tree trunk now and nodded. While Bob hurried away Jack lit a cigaret and jangled the case full of coins.
“How’re you feeling?” he asked.
“Better.”
I extended a feeble hand to cadge a drag. Jack looked around.
“Do you miss this place?”
“I wasn’t cut out for the healing arts.”
“I’ll say. A degree’s not worth a damn these days anyhow. Regard this august acreage. Fancies itself a shining beacon. Damn spread’s a charnel house just like everywhere else, an Indian graveyard. Look at McGill himself, that Scotch bastard. You won’t find the story on the Founder’s Elm of how he made his gelt and endowed this pile. You know what it was?”
“No.”
“Black ivory. That’s why I don’t give a tinker’s for the bootlegging. What’s that compared to blackbirding across the Middle Passage? A joke. Nowhere near to. It doesn’t matter, and that’s the secret of our bloody Dominion: money buys respectability. Simple. Whole country’s a monument to robber barons. All you have to do is found a library or endow a charity for strays. Yesterday’s blackhearted thieves are today’s grand old men. Just you watch: the Bronfmans and the Gursky boys will be held up as paragons of rectitude once Prohibition’s over. Money’s clean the more you have. That’s just what I’m after. An honorary doctorate and a dean’s dinner. Brandy enough to float you downriver. You wait and see. Where’re you staying?”
“I’m between hotels at the moment,” I said.
“Come on, then. I’ll whistle you up a cot at my place.”
We travelled along deserted streets, the city sawing logs. No traffic or noise. Jack had rooms at the Mount Royal Hotel.
“Isn’t this a mite conspicuous?” I asked as we ghosted down its stately corridors.
“No. It’s the same thing. Money buys discretion. I tip the house dick an extra sawbuck and it’s as though I was never here. It’ll be like that tonight at that knocking shop. The madam’ll write us off and the girls will be told to forget. They’re probably already with another group of upstanding citizens. Clergymen, say. What would your
