The Wild Ways (33 page)
Trying to make one last point while people were hanging up looked desperate. Amelia waited until the dial tone made Catherine Gale’s final statement before placing her phone on the desk. She wanted to have Paul set up a meeting with Dr. Hardy, but that wouldn’t move the wellhead fifty feet out of the Atlantic or move the Minister of the Environment off his fence.
“Ms. Carlson? The Honorable Cal Westbrook called. Personally. He wants to set up a lunch date.”
“Isn’t one of his responsibilities the Sydney tar ponds agency?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Come up with a believable excuse.”
“On it.”
On the one hand, it wouldn’t hurt to have another cabinet minister on her side. On the other hand, a perceived association between Carlson Oil and Cape Breton’s enduring environmental disaster was not something she wanted to encourage.
“Ms. Carlson? Since Two Seventy-five N’s press conference supporting the Hay Island well has gotten excellent coverage—I’ve sent you the list, current as of eleven minutes ago,” he added before she could ask, “have you considered returning the pelts?”
“Returning the pelts?” First Catherine Gale’s pale reflection, now this.
“Because they’ve done what you requested.”
“And they’ll maintain that as long as we have the pelts. Is there anything else?”
“It’s just, I got the impression, from the press conference, that I was at . . .”
“Are you drunk?”
He looked startled. “No, of course not.”
He wasn’t lying. “Then get to the point.”
“The owners of these pelts have an emotional attachment to them.”
Amelia rolled her eyes. “Of course they do. That’s what makes this effective blackmail.”
“So you won’t . . .” He stared at her for a moment, then shook his head. “Of course not. You have a manicure scheduled for eleven and there’ll be a reporter from CBC Halifax outside the building when you leave for lunch. He’ll be looking for a spontaneous response to the press conference. I’ve prepared your statement. And the CRA has opened a docket on Mathew Burke.”
“Should I know a Mathew Burke?”
“The union rep you wanted dealt with.”
“Of course.”
He paused halfway out the door, looking almost judgmental, shook his head, and kept moving.
Amelia rethought her position on Paul and sleep deprivation. It seemed as though baggy eyes were the least of the effects.
Charlie woke up to the sounds of Mark and Tim in the bathroom, saving water. The fiddler in her head played “Never was Piping so Gay” and given the whole piping/plumbing thing, Charlie supposed she would have done the same had their positions been reversed. Closer, she could hear Shelly up on the sofa bed, snoring softly. The light against her eyelids said it was close to noon, and she could smell grass fires as her uncles burned off the thatch in the ditches.
Wait . . .
Opening her eyes, she came face-to-face with Jack, cocooned in his sleeping bag, mouth open, a smudge of ash on his cheek.
Someone would’ve screamed by now if it was serious,
she reminded herself and poked his forehead.
she reminded herself and poked his forehead.
His eyes snapped open instantly, flared gold, then softened to annoyed teenage hazel. “What?”
“You came in.”
“Too light too early,” he muttered, flopped over, and went back to sleep.
Charlie ticked off another fact on her Jack-as-teenager list—
doesn’t stress about burning the house down if he wants to sleep in.
Since it would clearly be a while before she got to use the bathroom, or would want to use the bathroom if she’d matched up the correct actions to the sounds, she joined him.
doesn’t stress about burning the house down if he wants to sleep in.
Since it would clearly be a while before she got to use the bathroom, or would want to use the bathroom if she’d matched up the correct actions to the sounds, she joined him.
Paul had never felt this way about anyone. He thought he’d been in love before—Janis Rinscind in grade six, who’d shoved him off the end of the pier and he’d had to ditch his jacket and shoes to make it back to shore, and Bonnie O’Neill in the summer between first and second year university who’d lost her hat at Peggy’s Cove and he’d almost been swept away getting it back—but what he felt now, what he felt for Eineen Seulaich, was the difference between looking at a puddle and looking at the ocean.
Janis and Bonnie, they’d been puddles.
Eineen was like the ocean—deep, mysterious, too beautiful to describe.
The sea is a harsh mistress
had been one of his father’s more persistent homilies. Paul had never understood it. The sea had always been nothing more than a large body of salt water containing rapidly depleting fish stocks that some men chose to risk their lives for.
had been one of his father’s more persistent homilies. Paul had never understood it. The sea had always been nothing more than a large body of salt water containing rapidly depleting fish stocks that some men chose to risk their lives for.
He understood it now. Palm sweaty against the plastic case, he waited for Eineen to answer the phone.
“Hello?”
It wasn’t her voice. “Is Eineen . . . She gave me . . .” The words got stuck behind his need to speak with Eineen. His need to know nothing had happened to her since he’d left her at dawn. His need to know the entire night hadn’t been a dream no matter how much the bruises on his knees suggested it had been very real. Pebble beach; not his first pick for that kind of activity although at the time, he hadn’t noticed the rocks.
“Paul, right? Hang on, I’ll get her.”
“Thank you.” Sitting in his car in the dry cleaner’s parking lot, he remembered how his name in her mouth had sounded like a storm at sea, sweeping up and shattering everything in its path.
“Paul.” Today, it was like waves sliding up over the shore, quiet and welcoming.
“Where are you?”
“With my cousin in Louisburg.”
“I need to see you.”
“I know.”
“Ms. Carlson won’t give the pelts back until the drilling has begun.”
“I told you.”
“I had to ask.”
She sighed, and Paul swore he felt her breath against his cheek. “I know.”
He thought she’d tell him they’d have to take them back themselves, steal them back, but she said nothing. He listened to his engine purr and his air conditioner hum and thought about the gas he was using and the oil that gas had come from and how there was better than ninety percent chance there were billions of barrels of it under the sea by Hay Island—even if only 500 million were recoverable with today’s technology, and said, “I know where they’re hidden. We can get them tonight. We can’t get them now,” he added quickly before she could protest. “I have meetings all afternoon and three calls to Fort McMurray I can’t make until after five, but then I’ll pick you up and we’ll get them, I promise.”
“You would turn against your company for me?”
His lips twitched into what was almost a smile. “You told me to.”
“You could have refused me.”
“No . . .” He ran his thumb along the leather seat, thought of the soft skin of her inner thighs, remembered the empty eyes of her seal pelt, and started talking again before things got weird. Weirder. “How could I? You’re the reason I’m breathing.” It was quite possibly the most ridiculous thing he’d ever said. And the truest.
“But only after your day’s work is done.”
He could call the office, tell Ms. Carlson something had come up he had to deal with personally. She’d assume it was to do with his job, with her, and it wasn’t like he couldn’t—didn’t—do a good portion of his job in the car. No, wait, he couldn’t, he had to deliver her dry cleaning so she could wear her favorite silk blouse to dinner with Mac Reynolds from the Canadian Environmental Law Association. The blouse was the perfect blend of professional and might-be-interested and he’d been on the lookout for a couple more like it, but for now . . .
“Paul.”
“Don’t ask me to walk away from this job. It’s . . .” It wasn’t his father’s job. It wasn’t up before dawn, and a body destroyed by the cold and the wet, and still not enough money to make ends meet.
“I haven’t. I won’t.”
He believed her. And he chose to ignore the subtext that said she wouldn’t have to.
The Louisburg stage for the Samhradh Ceol Feill was a solid seasonal structure near the Fort’s Visitor’s Center that took advantage of the Fort’s parking. It had a backstage area actually large enough for the bands to transition smoothly and a stage manager who seemed to know what she was doing. Although Grinneal had drawn a Saturday evening spot, the entire band had taken advantage of their all access passes to check it out. When Tim didn’t swear at the electrical, and Mark approved of the roadies who’d be helping Jack, Charlie figured they were set.
Actually, some of the roadies looked familiar.
“Those two played in Mabou,” Shelly told her, pointing at a couple of scrawny teenagers staggering past with cases of bottled water. “They volunteer and get a chance to go on stage between bands. Most of them are solos, but they can have up to three in a group. Their names go into a lottery; winners sit out the next draw but go back in the draw after. The festival stage offers a lot of exposure.”
“Sure,” Charlie snorted, “if you want to be an itinerant musician dependent on the kindness of strangers, which I’m not saying is a bad thing,” she continued as Shelly’s brows went up. She spread her arms. “I mean, hello, knowing of what I speak.”
“It’s not a bad life.” Shelly grinned. “In fact, it’s a fine life.”
“No show tunes!” Mark snapped, swinging around to face them, sunlight glinting on his holographic Sharon, Lois, and Bram medallion. “I end up in one more drunken ode to Rodgers and Hammerstein and I will put my head through my floor tom.”
“It’s three in the afternoon. Who’s drinking?”
As Shelly began naming names, Jack poked Charlie in the side. “Ow.”
“Yeah. Whatever. The seal-girl, I mean the fiddler’s girlfriend, is trying to get your attention.”
“Tanis? Is she crying?”
Jack leaned out to the right, and squinted. “I don’t think so.”
“Wonder of wonders.” Charlie turned and Tanis waved. “Come on.”
“I don’t . . .”
Jack’s arm was warm when she grabbed it but more like
car parked in the sun
than
burn the flesh from your bones.
“This may be about what happened last night. You’re my distraction.”
car parked in the sun
than
burn the flesh from your bones.
“This may be about what happened last night. You’re my distraction.”
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