Mind Games (38 page)

My route took me upwards instead, the narrow stairway to the loft. It was as defensible a position as any.

Lyall’s voice had gone low and throaty, the words indecipherable, but the tone taunting.

“I’m not!” Grundy screamed. “I’m not!”

“Won’t you kiss me, Bob? Just once.”

Grundy let out a ghastly howl of terror. The kiss was a brutal, piercing bark of a bullet, its echo bouncing from timbered walls. Grundy was roaring like a wounded bear, but it was Lyall who was the bloodied prey, staggering back, slowly slipping to his knees, his face a mask of dismay and incredulity.

So stunned was I by this sight – of blood spurting from Lyall’s chest, streaming over his cupped hands, his body collapsing to the floor – that I became aware almost too late that Grundy was looking about frantically, for me, for Ginger. I sprinted farther up, I was a step from the top landing as he looked my way, my only protection a blanket.

Without a thought, except to deflect his aim, I spun the blanket toward him as he fired. The bullet went harmlessly aloft, and the blanket wrapped around his head.

I didn’t see what happened immediately thereafter – I was diving into the loft, rolling on thick carpet, yelling for Gladys and her daughter to stay down. At the same time, there came a shaft of piercing light, followed by a fusillade of glass-shattering sniper fire, then silence for a second, then another blast, and a splintering of wood, the door flying off its hinges. Then the scuffling of many boots. Shouts. “Freeze! Freeze!”

Grundy was beyond obeying this order. From the railing, I saw his body splayed on the couch, the blanket draped over his head. Death had been relatively kind – it came fast and unseen. While flailing under the blanket, freeing himself from it, he’d staggered into the sights of the rifles outside the tall windows.
Only one of five bullets missed him, the others propelling him backwards onto the couch.

I was transfixed by the ghastly scene for a few moments, then I gathered my wits and called downstairs, announcing we were all present and safe. Gladys Moore was frantic about Ginger, but cheering broke out when she emerged up the staircase. Gladys Moore, abashed not a whit by my nudity, put her arms about me, whispering a husky “Thank you.”

From a futon in the loft, I took a sheet, a bright coral colour, and wrapped myself in it. I looked like a Buddhist priest.
Do not fight the river, let the river take you
.

Many lives might have been spared had Grundy been emotionally capable of following that advice. His was a case of homosexual dread so severe, so pathological, so morbid, that no narcotic but murder could relieve the pain.

At the end, Allis, we both seemed at a loss for words, and things that needed to be said remained unsaid. Just before we parted, as we came into each other’s arms, I struggled to find a phrase of thanks, some loving words. But you pressed a finger to my lips and said with a smile, “Catch you later, Dr. Dare.” And you led me out, and all I could do was wave while blowing into a handkerchief as the elevator doors closed between us.

This is what I might have said:

Thank you for your wisdom, patience, and affection. For your skill, your deep understanding, your fine hearing for unconscious processes, your ability to explore the netherworld of the human soul.

My near-breakdown must have presented, four months ago, a daunting challenge. Here was a blathering, wild-eyed
creature in your office, reeking of anxious sweat, playing smart-aleck games: competition, control, avoidance. How well you hid your exasperation.

On our walk in Stanley Park, after you lost a patient to suicide, you let your vulnerability show raw and exposed. I learned from that, learned to trust, learned to give myself up to you. And I gave. And you gave more. And in the process, something happened, an event of the heart that isn’t without precedent in this hazardous profession.

This is why therapy must end: you can’t allow yourself to do it any more. Parameters have shifted. Ah, Allis, I’ve fantasized about taking a leap with you. But how could you be happy, even content, with the incompletely parented, self-flagellating Timothy Jason Dare?

Still, there’s the unalterable fact of love. For I do love you (though not in the ways of which the poets sing), and I desire you, so much that I’ve quaked at the thought of engaging you in that ultimate pas de deux. And maybe such a dance might last a worthwhile time … but I ask myself: Why do so many ballets end unhappily? And could you bear to live with one who tends, on inappropriate occasions, to blurt another’s name?

Today, again, you struck home – though “second best” isn’t my preferred phrase. I can’t say Sally’s artistic gift is any greater than yours (though I’ve given up hoping to understand the creative impulse).

The answer is more mundane. I had happiness with Sally, the greatest happiness I’ve known. Not perfect joy, but enough to deter me from gambling elsewhere – as long as hope hadn’t given up its last gasp. On reflection, I probably even felt that hope, unconsciously, when my competition turned out to be Ellery Cousineau.

Sally phoned on Saturday, as I was in bed on the
Altered Ego
, hoarse and clogged. James had described my condition before putting her through, and her words were tender. She didn’t want to be the last person on earth to congratulate me for my
recent heroics, and she went on about them with the kind of bubbly melody of words that I haven’t heard for many months.
Miriam Finds an Unlikely Hero
.

“When you’re better, let’s do something,” she said. (Wherever she wants. Whatever she wants to do. A two-star movie? A Diana Krall concert? I’ll convince her I’m capable of abdicating my dictatorship. I’ll pick up my socks. If I can find them.)

No mention was made of Cousineau in that conversation. I think I can fairly assume her interest in taking trips in his Cessna has abated. Meanwhile, pouting on the sidelines was a subject of renewed interest, the bad habit who had deprived her of room to grow. Despite all my will and effort to reconcile with Sally, ironically it was a series of violent events, of danger, and my own haphazard heroics that rekindled her interest.

It’s odd how I missed the cues from Grundy and Lyall. The threesome with Jossie finally nudged me in the right direction: a rare instance of not one, but two men blinded by the homosexual dread they shared. Lyall protected himself with a subterranean existence that rarely surfaced. Grundy simply buried everything.

Bit by bit, his patterns came together for me. His desperate brief affairs with women. His boasts about his virility – for example, with the Edmonton hairdresser when, in fact, he failed to rise to the occasion. His unwillingness to make male friends when young – he was afraid of them, of what he felt, he’d grown up in a culture in which homosexuality was an unthinkable concept, a disgrace, an insult to God. What an indescribably powerful denial it was that propelled him to the ultimate extreme of murder. Stop those damned headaches, those tensions. Make it all go away.

Enough. (How odd it is that the events of last Friday have prompted no nightmares. It is as if I have confronted my demons.)

Victoria was in a contemplative mood when she came to see me – a settlement has been reached in Huff versus Dare and New Millennium Press. She has accepted that the spunky
English teacher outduelled the lawyer with the oversized testicles. Clint has agreed to accept compensation for his costs, a concession that will save Victoria’s budding career.
Desirée
will come out in hardback next year. But Victoria and New Millennium are also required to make florid apology.

I assume that Brovak, in typical fashion, left his scruples parked outside in his car while he delivered a set of prints to the pseudo-Dodi, and promised silence if Huff would let dead dogs lie. The grovelling apology will give Huff enough boasting rights to save face.

Huff has no doubt concluded that I was the agent of his undoing – the word must be all through the cove that I was recently in his neighbourhood. I expect he’ll stop harassing me, however, now that he’s aware that I know his fetishistic secret. (I pray that neither he nor the public will ever learn that
When Comes the Darkness
was a recipe for murder.)

On Tuesday, when I was finally up and about, Celestine Post came by with her usual bag of mischief. She’s gone beyond the bounds of duty, is continuing to see Ellery Cousineau, in whom she has finally met her erotic match. “I like the games.” I didn’t ask her to elaborate. “He’s an artist in his own way.”

This reference to his bedroom skills may not have been intended as a thrust, but it hurt. I may not be a stunt flier, but I don’t play Mr. Dressup. Still, the thought of playing second fiddle to this virtuoso galled, as did my concern that Sally, should we ever reconcile, might compare us, remembering him, perhaps regretting …

Sally and I settled on Thursday for our dinner date, and I let her choose the locale, of course, and she picked the Pondicherry, a good sign.

Nataraja greeted us with a puzzled look: his valued customer had been playing the field, gorgeous women falling all over him, and here he is with a flame that was supposed to have burned out. (Nataraja, by the way, has got to know Vivian from her visits to the restaurant and has been a faithful visitor at her
home; she’s healing rapidly under his soothing nostrums. Word has it that Dr. Lalonde is now seeing a shrink.)