Blood on a Saint (18 page)

There was a good-sized crowd, and a few people were dancing. That didn’t always happen on blues night, but he decided to go with it and vary the tempo and the set list to do a few danceable numbers over the course of the evening. He concluded the second set with B.B. King’s “The Thrill Is Gone.” He saw a fairly young woman who was not all that steady on her pins approaching Burke at his table, where he was sitting with three other guys, all smoking, all half in the bag. Monty recognized them as frequent flyers at the Shag but only knew one by name, Mel. Burke was in the process of lighting up a smoke when the woman reached him. He shook his head but smiled at her, and she teetered back to her place. A middle-aged man got up then and lurched in her direction; they stumbled around the dance floor till the last note faded away.

The piece ended with enthusiastic applause, and Monty sat down with the band; his beer supply was redirected for the duration of the break. Burke raised a glass to him in salute from his place at the next table. There was a steady flow of barroom chat between the two tables until it was time for the third set.

What was going on over in the corner by the door? Monty noticed a lone drinker who appeared to have a tape recorder on his table. Couldn’t be. Monty had never seen anyone come in and record the band’s performance. Time to go back onstage. He would check into the situation later.

He was feeling no pain at all by this time, though “no pain” might not be the best way to approach the blues. That was easily remedied. Don’t call it “no pain.” Call it “wasted” and then it was perfectly appropriate. His gaze came to rest on one young lady who had been giving him the eye all night, unless that was just his booze-fuelled imagination at work. Possibly. But he didn’t think so. She was a fine-looking girl, with soft brown hair and big dark eyes. He thought he remembered her from other performances here. But time to concentrate on the tunes.

He had half the room up dancing, and the young one with the dark eyes got up and danced by herself in front of the stage. A couple of women tried to get Burke onto the dance floor, but he smiled and shook his head, holding up his glass as if to say “I’m spending the evening with this” or maybe, to use one of Burke’s frequent expressions, “I’m legless with drink.” But Monty decided to make him an offer he couldn’t refuse so, after a rousing version of Wilson Pickett’s “Land of a Thousand Dances,” he announced, “Here’s a nice, slow number that everyone can dance to. Even my pal Brennan here. He prefers the classics, so let’s give him Schubert, as interpreted by Deodato. With a name like that, the guy has to be a saint.”

Burke, being a good sport, gave the eye to one of the women who had asked him earlier, and they waltzed together to Deodato’s instrumental “Ave Maria.” He gently pried her arms off him at the end of the piece.

The band got back to more traditional blues fare after that. They wound up with Jimmy Reed’s “Cold and Lonesome” and a long harp solo by Monty on James Cotton’s “Slow Blues.”

The performance earned applause, the thumping of tables, and some drunken shouts of approval. The other band members had been joined by their wives and girlfriends, and the one female member by her husband. Monty felt a pang of regret that Maura was not with him as she would have been in happier times, but he tried to put it aside. Last thing he needed with so much alcohol on board was to get maudlin. One of the guys had left Burke’s table so Monty seated himself there, and they all engaged in small talk about sports, cars, cops, aggravation at the unemployment insurance office, the usual. Burke made the occasional comment and enjoyed his whiskey.

At another table were two women Monty had seen before. They spent a lot of time in this bar, and he knew why. They didn’t call the place the Flying Shag for nothing. He nodded to them and they gave him a little wave.

Monty’s back was to the bar, and he faced the front door. He took a glance in that direction, towards the table in the corner by the door and, at that moment, caught the lone stranger eyeing him before the guy could look away. It struck him then that the guy looked familiar; he had seen him somewhere. Monty was about to get up and have a word with him in case he really was recording the band. The members of Functus would not welcome that kind of private initiative. Pirate recordings of Functus? The music market in North America would go into a tailspin.

But Burke said something then, and Monty turned to him. There was a burst of loud conversation nearby and the banging of a tray of glasses, and Monty missed whatever was said. When the priest got up and pointed to the back of the room past the bar, Monty realized he must have been asking the fellow next to him, Mel, where the washroom was. After all his visits to the Flying Stag, Burke would have been aware that the toilets were beyond the bar somewhere. But now that Monty thought of it, he had never known Burke to use the public facilities anywhere. Not even at the Midtown, where he spent several hours a night several times a month. Typical of the fastidious priest. Well, here at the Shag there were several doors, and it would not do to enter the wrong one.

Burke was holding the bottom of his white T-shirt, and Monty could see there was brown liquid spilt on it. Who but Burke would feel compelled to go and wash off a stain in a place like the Flying Stag?

“Brennan,” Monty said to him as he passed by, “you’ll see three doors. Make sure you go past — ”

“Yeah, yeah, I know it’s back there somewhere. I’ll find it.” He continued on his way.

Monty leaned across the table to Mel. “Did you fill him in?”

Mel broke into a grin. “He’s a big boy. He’ll have to learn his way around.”

“You didn’t warn him about . . . the Honeymoon Suite?”

No response except a wider grin.

Monty noticed that one of the two women regulars had got up from her table and headed down past the bar. Monty ordered another beer and waited for Burke’s return.

Less than two minutes later Monty heard, “We could go somewhere else, if you don’t like the . . . room there.”

The woman’s voice came from the area of the bar counter, behind Monty. He heard Burke clear his throat, and Monty turned around to watch. The woman was tripping along in Burke’s wake. His T-shirt was still stained. He had his left hand out in a gesture that said, “Leave it. Never mind.”

“Honey, you were digging it. I
know
you were.”

The hand made a slashing movement. It said, “Shut up.”

The guys at the table exchanged glances and snickered. They buried their faces in their glasses as Burke sat down. He lifted his own glass and drained it.

Mel leaned over and said to Monty, “That one over there’s got her eye on you. You got it made in the shade, Monto. Come on,” he said to his buddy at the table, “let’s let the lovebirds get together.” The two of them got up and made ready to leave. “You already got yours,” Mel said to Burke.

“I did not!” Burke exclaimed.

“Any requests?” Monty asked Burke when the others had gone. “How about ‘Third Rate Romance’?”

“Fuck off.”

Monty then heard Mel saying to the dark-eyed beauty, “He asked me to ask you to join him.” And the next thing Monty knew, she was sitting next to him, beaming.

“Hi,” was all he said.

“Hi. You were really good up there. I’ve heard you here before, but I was too shy to say anything.”

“Well, I’m glad you spoke up this time.” Monty could hear the slight slurring of his voice. He was well over his customary limit.

She leaned towards him and gave him a view down the front of her shirt. “Maybe you could get the other guys to sing, and then me and you could dance together.”

“That’s tempting,” he said, “but I don’t think they’d appreciate it if I slacked off for the last set.”

She leaned farther in and put her arms around him, putting her lips to his and giving him a deep and prolonged kiss. He responded to her, and thought,
Yes! This is going to happen.
Lay off the booze, do the last set, then off to her place, and . . . in like Flynn
. Just like old times playing the bars when he was single.

But he wasn’t single. He had spent the last two years trying to resume his married life with Maura, his family life with the kids. Despite the overwhelming temptation to seize this opportunity, he could end up blowing his chances forever. Starting something with this person, this fan, would not be a good idea. Having a one-night stand and avoiding her ever after would be caddish behaviour on his part. He pulled away and shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m half-cut here, and I shouldn’t be doing this.”

“It’s okay. I want you to.”

“I’m married.” He didn’t even want to think about the repercussions if, after all they had been through, Maura were to learn of him getting it on with someone she would call a groupie. She would banish him to hell for all eternity. What he wanted to do was finish the set and take a cab to Maura’s. And be with her and stay with her. But she would blast him for being so pie-eyed. He wouldn’t go tonight. He’d go when he was fresh and sober.

“You don’t look married,” Dark Eyes said. “I thought you were single, or divorced.”

“No.”

“I’m leaving.”

“No need of that. Stay around and listen to the music. I’ll do a song for you. What would you like to hear?”

“No! I’m leaving!” She got up and marched to the door and out into the night.

He looked across at Burke, whose expression was unreadable behind a pall of smoke. Monty got up and signalled to the band that they should start getting ready for their last set. Before heading to the stage, he sat in the chair next to Burke’s.

“Quite a night, Father.”

“You lost a friend there, Collins.”

“Yep. Not much of a night for me in the romance department. But you, now, that’s a different story. Spent some time in the Honeymoon Suite, I noticed. I can’t help but contrast that with the way I saw you earlier tonight, in the lecture hall. From the Reverend Doctor Burke, scaling the heights of metaphysical speculation, to a guy in a dirty shirt getting his rocks off with a twenty-dollar hooker in the toilet of the Flying Shag.”

“I didn’t get anything, you bollocks! I was standing there at the sink and the next thing I know this one is on her knees in front me with her hands . . . I put a stop to it.”

“You’ve never used the can here before?”

“No. And I didn’t use it tonight either; I tried to wash a stain off my shirt.”

“I guess I never told you about the services available to those who enter door number one. The girls see a guy go in there, and it’s assumed he’s looking for company. Paid company. It’s all part of the charming ambience here at the Shag.”

“You’ve enjoyed those services yourself, have you?”

Monty wasn’t about to answer that. If he had ever been in there — and he made no admission to that effect — it would have been as a callow youth, a drunken young arsehole who had not yet been granted the hand of Miss Maura MacNeil in marriage.

“The place is filthy!” Burke griped. “The sink is dirty. The urinals are sewers. The floor is dirty and pissy, and your feet stick to it. I have to feel sorry for those poor girls working in conditions like that.”

“If not for the dirt and the stench, though, if this opportunity had arisen, say, after the Shag’s semi-annual refit, toilet flush, and hosing down, would your priestly vows have been maintained?”

“Yeah. They would. Now don’t you have a job to do before we fall into a taxi for home?”

“I guess this means we’ll wrap things up after my last set, eh?”

“I’d say so.”

The band played on through one last, abbreviated, set. Just as Monty was about to announce the final number, he looked down the room and saw the guy with the recorder putting his jacket on. It was the dark rain jacket Monty had noticed outside the lecture hall at St. Mary’s. He remembered then where he had seen the guy before. The television studio. He and Podgis had been having a word when Monty arrived to watch the replay of the show. This amateur spy was a reporter, working with Podgis, and he had seen and recorded all the night’s sordid events. Starring the defence lawyer and the Crown witness, out boozing and womanizing together.

“Hold on for a second,” he instructed the band, and leapt down from the platform. Burke was giving him a questioning look, and Monty gestured towards the reporter. When he got to Burke, he said, “That’s a reporter. He’s working with Podgis. We’ll put him out of service.”

Monty saw the implications cut instantly through Burke’s inebriated state. No doubt the priest pictured himself, and his brief sojourn in the Honeymoon Suite, as a news item the following day, just as Monty pictured Maura hearing the news about his own short-lived encounter. Burke got up so fast his chair tipped over with a clatter. He and Monty reached the reporter just before he could make his escape. Burke stepped in front of him and blocked his exit. The fellow was short and skinny with pointy facial features. He glared up at Burke and demanded, “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing.”

“The answer is none of your business.”

“It’s my business if you are in here recording the band,” Monty said.

“I didn’t come to record the band.”

“Oh, yeah? What did you come for?”

“I got what I came for, and now I’m leaving. So get out of my way.”

“You’re not going anywhere with that.” Monty pointed to the tape recorder. He made a grab for it and wrenched it out of the reporter’s hands.

“Give me that! This is theft! I’m calling the police!”

“Go ahead, you little weasel. That tape is not going to exist by the time they get here.”

Monty opened the recorder and removed the cassette, then began pulling the tape out with his fingers. Burke reached towards the guy and grabbed something. A notebook.

“You can’t do that! That’s my own private property.”

“To be used to violate the privacy of how many people? And for whose benefit?”

Burke read from the pages of the notebook: “Collins blues at Stag tonight. Burke lecture at SMU. Burke flirting with teen bimbos. Collins at SMU.” He looked at the reporter. “Flirting with bimbos? How did you come up with that one?”