Headhunter

For once throw caution to the wind — go backstage and see her. Whatever have you got to lose? If you get the brush-off, you're going to recover. But if you don't try it.. My God, what an actress.

The security guard had stopped him at the door. 'And just where do you think you're going, my friend?' the heavyset man had asked him.

'I was hoping to get backstage. Isn't this the way?'

'You got a pass to get there?'

'No.'

'Then for you this is not the way.'

It was only for a moment that DeClercq had hesitated. Then he'd reached into his pocket and flashed his Regimental Shield. 'Is this pass enough?' Then leaning forward he had whispered, 'Let's avoid a scene.'

The guard had let him through.

Well, what's a little fraud in the name of love?he pondered. He certainly had no legitimate business backstage — why, ninety-nine percent of the males in the audience that night must have fallen in love — and his shield held no authority in the USA. Yet there he was wandering the corridors, searching out the dressing rooms, fearing exposure at any moment for his amorous deceit, his heart beating in his throat while sweat dripped from his armpits, asking someone for the way and then before he knew it, knocking on the door. It had suddenly occurred to him that he'd thought of nothing to say.

'You enter at your own risk,' called a voice beyond the door. 'Take warning, I'm not dressed.'

And now here he was almost twenty-five years later, sitting at his desk and imagining another unattired wife.

Patterns, DeClercq thought. Then: Janie, how I miss you.

Again and again in those early days of his second marriage, the Superintendent had told himself that it was wrong and unhealthy to spend so much time in the past. Things happen. That's life. Or fate. Or God-knows-what. The living go on living. Sure they had been good times, but that part of life was over. Besides, think of her.

You're a lucky man, Robert DeClercq, who's acting like a fool. Few men are fortunate enough to find love once in their lives. And you've found it twice. Can't you get it through your head that any other man in your position would be down on his knees in prayer that Genevieve came along? Where would you be now had she not picked up the pieces?

But then he would think of Jane, and that toothless baby smile.

DeClercq had never seen Kate as happy as the day their daughter was born. In truth he had never been as happy himself. Then promoted to Sergeant within the RCMP, he had stood in that Montreal hospital room and watched his wife, hair matted and streaked with sweat, cradle the newborn infant lovingly in her arms. He had been overwhelmed by the sight of that shriveled-up, wrinkled prune. But a prune with such eyes.

Many years later that same image had been in his mind on a cold snowy night in December, when sitting in front of the embers of a rapidly dying fire, the wind of winter wailing along the coast of West Vancouver, Genevieve had touched his arm and crouched down to sit beside him. 'You look troubled, Robert. Tell me what's the matter.'

'Just thinking,' he had said.

'About Kate or Jane?' she inquired.

'About Kate and Jane, I guess.' He had poked at the fire.

'It wasn't your fault, Robert. I wish you'd remember that. I wish somehow I knew a way to lessen the hurt.'

DeClercq had looked at her with veiled sadness in his eyes. 'You do, Genny. I mean it. Every minute. Every day. I really don't know where I'd be without you. I love you and I need you — but still I feel this guilt.'

'For what? Their deaths? Your life? The hand that Fate has dealt you? Robert, you've got to learn to be easier on yourself. It wasn't your fault!'

'Wasn't it, Genny? I think it was. If I hadn't been a cop it never would have happened.'

'If you hadn't been a cop you'd have never got backstage. And you never would have met her. And if you hadn't met her, you would never have had the child and all the joy she gave you. It may have been a short time, but Robert, it was worth it. I know that. And you know it too. Besides, if you hadn't been a cop I'd never have met you either. Then where would I be? Can you give me an answer?'

'You wouldn't be with a man who can't forget the past.'

'I wouldn't be with you, love. And that's all that matters.' Then ever so softly — was it spoken? — she whispered to the fire: 'Oh God, I'd give my very life to bear you another child.'

'I know,' he said gently, and took her in his arms.

For a long time they sat there just looking at the embers. Red, orange, yellow sparks danced hotly before their eyes.

'Genny,' he said finally. 'This isn't fair for you.'

She turned around and looked at him, frowning, and said: 'Don't you think that I'm the one to decide what's fair for me?'

'Of course. It's just that.

'It's just that you think you're using up my youth. You think, cheri,that I have a world of experience before me, a world that if I don't taste now, I'll live to regret later. You are deeply worried that you're using me as a crutch. You think that to be fair to me, to give me the sort of love that I need, you must forget Kate and Jane. That you can't seem to do, so you think you're unfair. Have I got it right?'

She reached out and touched his face and warmed him with her eyes. 'Believe me, Robert, it's good for me for you to remember them. Please try to see you and me from my point of view. I've never met a man or woman who could find total satisfaction — physical, mental, emotional — with just one other person. The odds are stacked against it: we all develop in different ways. Yet all of us seem to want that. To find somebody special in a relationship or marriage. Then later we're disillusioned and we look for someone else — maybe for a sexual fling or maybe just to talk. Even those who never break away, it doesn't stop them thinking.

'Well I think I'm different.

'I was so lucky to come of age within the women's movement. I could seize a freedom that no one before me had. And seize it I did. Job. Men in numbers. And lots of self-esteem.

'The job and the equality, those I'll never give up. But the men became a bummer. Indiscriminate fucking makes for a female or male slut. The benefit of my freedom was I got that out of my system. Men for me are easy. I've always been lucky that way — and maybe that's why I know in my heart that I only want one guy. That's just the way it is, Robert. And baby, I want you.'

She cast him the slightest trace of a very wicked smile.

Then without another word she slowly extricated herself from his arms. He remembered her standing up before him by the dim light of the fire, remembered thinking in earnest Genny, I'm blind compared to you,remembered the way she straightened her back and planted her feet apart, reaching for the top button of her blouse, pausing for one long erotic moment before she let it…

'I think I've found what you're talking about,' said Genevieve, excited, on the other end of the phone. 'The ritual of Hamatsa. Will you just listen to this!'

Robert DeClercq moved his notepad into place.

'It seems that just over a hundred and twenty years ago, cannibalism was general among the Kwakiutl Indians. Two fellows named Hunt and Moffat brought back firsthand accounts of the custom. Sometimes they said slaves were killed for the benefit of the Hamatsa. At other times the Hamatsa were content merely to rip mouthfuls of flesh from the chests and upper arms of their own tribesmen.

'It would appear that the Hamatsa held a special privileged position within the group. They were literally licensed cannibals.

'Hunt and Moffat swear they saw the following near Prince Rupert. A Kwakiutl shot and wounded a runaway slave who collapsed near the water's edge. Immediately he was set upon by a group including Hamatsas. They watched the Kwakiutl cut the slave to pieces with knives while the Hamatsas squatted in a circle crying: 'Hap! Hap! Hap!' According to Hunt and Moffat, who were helpless to intervene, the Indians snatched up the flesh still warm