Mount Pleasant (16 page)

T
HE AUTUMN MOOD HAD DIED
. Dry leaves swirled in vicious eddies, the deadened trees against a grey sky. He and Gladys were already late for their dinner party but were still standing in the clever lighting of Je Ne Sais Quois, looking for a suitable appetizer. Harry checked his watch and saw 8:02. Gladys was asking about the wild boar pistachio terrine. Was the boar truly wild?

“Totally wild,” the girl behind the counter said. “Nuclear.” She might have been twenty, a small crucifix bolted through the flesh above her left eye.

“It’s just that what is sold as wild boar often isn’t.”

“As far as I know,” the girl said.

Gladys assessed this to be not very far and after another five minutes of browsing and questions, picked a duck, hazelnut and Calvados terrine that cost $26. She moved down the long, gleaming glass case and examined an ash-covered monastery goat cheese. “And the ash is …” Gladys asked.

The girl hesitated. “Organic Japanese maple?” she offered.

Harry looked at the terrine and the cheese and calculated their cost as a percentage of his savings account; it amounted to almost forty percent. It was understood that this was an expensive and off-limits shop, but Gladys was using her own money in order to make the right kind of impact with the friend who was hosting the party.

Faced with the bleak economy that Felicia’s confession had reinforced, Harry had engaged in a flurry of cuts. He had cancelled the absurdly priced cable, gotten rid of their land line, vowed not to take taxis and avoided the organic butcher shop with the cheery map that showed the source of their meat, local farmers appearing in earnest headshots with their names inscribed in blue script beneath. He had tried every one of the wines listed in the wine columnist’s “Best Buys on a Budget” feature. He walked more, cancelled the newspaper and all magazines, renegotiated his cellphone plan with a chipper Bangalore resident. His monthly savings from all these measures, he figured, was somewhere in the $400 range. He was careful not to compare this modest gain with what he was paying Tommy Bladdock.

They stopped at the wine store and picked up a Côtes du Rhône that had been recommended by the same columnist who had steered Harry to the bargain bin. In the car they were silent, listening to the comforting FM. The dashboard clock said 8:17.

“We should stop and get flowers for Paige,” Gladys finally said.

“We’re bringing appetizers and wine. I don’t know that flowers are necessary.”

“It’s her birthday.”

“I thought that was a month ago.”

“Technically, but this is a dinner party birthday party.”

“We’re already late. If we stop and get flowers … I don’t even know where you’re going to get them—some convenience store that’s selling shit roses for eight bucks? It’s going to look like an afterthought.”

“I think we should bring flowers, that’s all.”

“But we should have got them from a florist two hours ago. We’re late and bringing the appetizer. People will be eating dinner by the time we get there.”

They drove in silence for a few minutes before Harry said, “I don’t have a good feeling about Ben and Sarah. Who gets married these days? It seems so old-fashioned. Don’t you think they’re too young?”

“We were young.”

“Not that young.”

“Anyway, it’s just an engagement. They probably won’t get married for at least a year.”

“Long enough to realize the sex isn’t that great. I don’t imagine it is.”

“I haven’t given a lot of thought to that, Harry,” Gladys said. “She might be good for him.”

“I think his innate passivity will make her homicidal. If they adopt, as she threatens to—and almost everything seems to be a threat with her—their marriage will turn into a civil war.”

“I think you have to have a little faith.”

It felt odd to be arguing against the union. Usually it was Harry who was laissez-faire and Gladys who was the pragmatist. But that was before his conversion, before Dale died, before he saw life as a series of missteps that lead, finally, into a blind alley filled with poverty-tinged regret.

“What if we’re left to raise the baby?” Harry said.

“I can’t imagine Sarah would abandon the child.”

“She could eat her child. She barely has a pulse.”

“Harry.”

“It would be a burden, Gladys,” Harry said. “Another burden.”

They arrived at 8:37. The duck terrine in the cloth bag dangling from Harry’s hand felt heavy and lost. Four faces smiled hello.

“These are for you,” Gladys said, handing the discount freesias to Paige.

“Oh, Glad.”

“Nothing really.”

“No.”

Paige and Gladys had gone to school together and after a long hiatus had renewed their friendship. Her husband, Newton, a school principal, walked toward Harry with his hand extended. He was slowly rounding into the shape of a teardrop, his gait awkward, swishing.

“Harry.”

“Newton.” He offered up the wine, cheese and terrine, and Newton gathered them and trundled to the kitchen, calling over his shoulder, “Harry, this is Satori and Dean. Dean, Satori, Harry.”

Dean was a glum leftie in his fifties, dressed for a trade school dance. Satori was indeterminately Asian. They all shook hands.

Newton came back and handed Harry a glass of inexpensive Chilean Merlot. “Harry, we were talking about the New Poverty.”

“I was just getting used to the old kind,” Harry said.

“Dean thinks everyone’s going to be poor. We’re headed back to the barter system.”

Dean was a sculptor, an environmental scold who made unlikable shapes out of bicycle parts and discarded laptops.
Gladys had shown Harry Dean’s website before they left the house. The home page was a photograph of Dean’s backyard with his sculptures in it, aggressive steel shapes with titles like
Scheherazade Forgets the Words
and listed at $9,300 per. The New Poverty would be inclusive and levelling, Dean said now: lawyers would take in laundry, doctors would perform vasectomies in exchange for homemade wine, investment bankers would labour over backyard vegetable gardens.

“What could you trade, Harry?” Dean asked. “What is it you do?”

“I teach political science.”

“Well, there you are,” Dean said. “We’ll always need political science.”

We’ve never needed political science, Harry thought. “We barely have politics anymore,” he said. “Half the electorate doesn’t vote.”

Dean ignored the rebuke. “The old systems have broken down,” he said. “Newspapers, TV, music, books, banks—it’s out of the hands of the corporate beast. The whole animal is dying and there is blood in the streets, and that’s a good thing.”

Satori looked at her husband when he talked, but her face didn’t reveal whether she was absorbed or appalled by his facile rant.

“It’s post-production,” Dean continued. “Innovation. The artist rules.”

Harry thought of asking Dean how he was ruling exactly, but the pre-dinner conversation balkanized, and Harry was stuck with Newton and Paige and the quiet Satori, while Dean chatted with Gladys in the living room. Newton was talking about the school system’s imminent collapse, betrayed by lack of funds and vision, the classrooms filled with dolts. Harry nodded and watched Dean and Gladys.

Dean’s head went back in a theatrical laugh. He would be laughing at something he had said, not something she’d said. From a distance, without the audio, it was like one of those nature shows where they run a montage of mating dances done by various species: Jaggeresque preening, intricate salsas, parts of birds and lizards puffed up for effect. Dean was in full display. His hair was outrageously thick, quills that sprouted, greying heroically, reminding Harry of a porcupine.

Harry had once seen a program on the mating ritual of the porcupine. They mated once a year in a stunning performance that had rarely been filmed. They were solitary and territorial animals, but in mating season, the male went in search of the female, and often two or more males would end up in the same area. They were too slow to move on; mating season would be over by the time any of them found another mate. So they stayed and preened and fought for the female’s attention. The male stood on its hind legs, displaying its erection. Unlike humans, with their fallible, abused members, the porcupine’s erection could last for hours. The males fought one another for this rare chance at sex, and afterward, bloodied and insane, carrying the barbs of their enemies—a hundred quills stuck in their faces!—they danced for the female, waving those reliable boners. Who would love her like she’d never been loved?

The lucky winner first showered the female with urine, then, as she flipped her tail onto her back, he mounted her delicately from behind, his front paws resting on her upturned tail, protected from her quills. They had sex repeatedly until the female broke it off and retreated to a tree.

The voiceover was done by a British actor, who spoke in a hushed, educated tone. “Sexual contact ends,” he said, “and is followed by hostile screaming.”

He watched Gladys laugh and put her hand on Dean’s forearm. Gladys was the kind of woman that men were usually attracted to after dinner rather than before. Her beauty was subtle; her soft wisdom took a while to penetrate. But Dean, the artist, had discerned her qualities immediately. As he flirted openly with Gladys, Harry shot a quick look at Satori, who was slightly older than Dean. She had registered the mood in the living room with a single glance. Harry guessed this was a familiar scene.

Paige announced that dinner was ready. “Come and sit, everyone.” She set two bowls down on the table. “Butternut squash soup with toasted pumpkin seeds and nutmeg,” she proclaimed.

“Oh, how lovely,” Gladys said. “So autumn.”

Dinner marched on. Dean drank and pronounced. Satori was soundless. Newton laughed heartily at everything. Paige and Gladys caught up. Harry drifted in and out of conversations. He was the negative space in an expressionist painting, the blankness that surrounded the main subject; he filled the uncomfortable dining chair and picked at the farfalle con funghi. His marriage was disappearing, eroding like a glacier, helpless against the sun. He wondered about Dean and Satori—what was the nature of that relationship? He examined them for clues. Dean the serial philanderer and Satori the constant he returned to? Paige and Newton seemed unmysterious, middle-aged in the way middle age looks to children: solid, uninspired, sexless. But who knew?

“Harry. Harry? What’s your view?”

Newton’s face was poised across from him, waiting for an answer to a question Harry hadn’t heard.

“I think they should all be shot,” Harry ventured.

Newton laughed uproariously.

“Oh god, Harry,” Gladys said.

Harry noticed that Dean had gone from being cinematically drunk—filled with toasts and rants—to being almost comatose. In repose, he looked like one of van Gogh’s potato eaters, hollowed and blank, slumped in his seat.

The cake was finally served, a smallish mango mocha tart with a single candle in its centre, surrounded by blackberries. Dean had slumped farther in his chair, as if the air was slowly leaking out of a balloon. From Harry’s perspective, he was framed behind the small cake and single candle, and Harry thought he would make a brilliant photograph. There was the unplanned juxtaposition that photographers seek, that immediate visual irony. Seeing Dean publicly crumble made Harry feel he was somehow a little further ahead.

Paige blew out her candle and they ate the cake, though Dean didn’t touch his. And after the briefest possible gap that was still within the bounds of dinner party etiquette, Satori excused herself and came back with Dean’s coat and draped it over his shoulders like he was a damaged fighter.

“Thank you so much, Paige,” she said, kissing her on both cheeks. “It was wonderful to see you both. Happy birthday.” She turned to Harry and Gladys. “And it was a pleasure to meet you.”

On the way home, Harry wondered if Satori had led Dean away out of love or solidarity, if his collapse was something that happened on a regular basis. “How do you suppose they met?” Harry said.

“Newton and Paige?”

“No, Dean and Satori.”

“Art school would be my guess,” Gladys said.

“How old do you think she is?”

“Older than Dean. I gather all she does is yoga.”

“She was the exotic beauty and Dean was the
enfant terrible
,” Harry said. This had once been a game of theirs; to make up a
history for everyone they met. “He had a long scarf and smoked Gauloises and said everything Picasso did after
Guernica
was shit. It must have been fun, don’t you think?”

“Less so now, I’d say.”

“Now his only joy comes from flirting with other people’s wives.”

“He was hardly flirting.”

“You were enjoying it. You were laughing.”

“It isn’t against the law to laugh at a dinner party.”

Gladys was driving, due to the large cognac Harry had accepted after Dean and Satori had gone. He stared at her profile, framed in passing bleats of light as they drove toward the ravine. She had both hands on the steering wheel, as they taught in driving school, placed at ten and two o’clock. In the ravine they were the only car going east, the steep, forested hills rising up on each side, the elegant bridge decorated with bloated graffiti letters. He wanted to see someone dangling up there with a can of spray paint; he wanted to see it actually happen. The city was decorated with the insistent signatures of idle youth; banal, self-referential, though you had to admire their initiative. How did they paint the side of a bridge? Dangling from harnesses? Held by the ankles by trusted friends?

The trees went by in a comforting blur. It reminded Harry of childhood car trips, when simply driving through the night was filled with mystery.

FOURTEEN