He gulps and nods. He’s going to live with this lie if lightning strikes. He waves her to be silent, mimes that she should just mouth what she wants to say-he’s good at lip reading.
The gist of what he makes out is this-while Claudette was working the bar at the Bam Pub, she saw Dr. Eve Winters and Holly, tight together on stools, talking about what, she doesn’t know. Some flirtatious signals started happening, heavy eye contact, a squeeze of the hand, a pat.
Faloon nods, a picture forming of Claudette watching the harlot through narrowed eyes, her every touch and wink, watching the two women hit on each other. To Holly, a jane is as good as a john, she’s a pro, she’s not gender-biased. He tries this new slant on Dr. Winters, remembers how when the Topeka fishermen were undressing her over their salmon, she chose the Owl to talk to as less offensive.
Holly left the bar first, then Dr. Winters followed ten minutes later. Claudette does a charade of her yawning, looking at her watch. Faloon doesn’t know what he should make of this, but he can’t see Holly knocking someone over. She may know something, though, and isn’t talking.
He holds Pomeroy’s business card to the glass, Claudette nodding, she’ll pass this bit to the lawyer. He mouths, Have you told the cops?
She nods, then shrugs elaborately. Faloon gathers they didn’t seem interested.
After they go on air again, Claudette tries to cheer him up with Bamfield vignettes. Rumours have spread that Faloon’s take from the Breakers Inn is buried somewhere in town, so half the population is wandering around with shovels. Faloon misses Bamfield. Despite slowly going broke there, it was an okay joint, he beat his habit for a while. It felt weird going straight, but he might have adapted if he hung in. Because there was Claudette.
He feels buoyed by her, and as he watches her fight tears while being so perky and stand-up, he figures he’s in love with her, though he’s not sure because he’s never experienced it before. He says it anyway. “I feel like I’m in love with you.”
“Oh, Nick, I think I love you too.” The floodgates open.
He’s playing with being in love, enjoying the idea, even as Nurse Thompson puts him through a personality test about whether he has anti-societal feelings. She’s trying to get him to say the first thing that comes to his mind after loaded words.
He’s not very good at this game, his attention wandering because he unhappily recalls, in all the tears and excitement with Claudette, promising to get her a diamond as big as a walnut. It had the jarring ring of commitment. Engagement. Marriage.
“Blood.”
“Nose.”
“Nose? Why a nose?”
“Because I walked into a wall last night, and had a nosebleed.”
“Sleep.”
“Walk.” The nurse frowns, not happy with these results. “Because I was sleepwalking when I walked into the wall.”
“Death.”
“Suicide.” Faloon has already told her about his feelings in that direction.
“Anger.”
“Love.”
“Woman.”
“Love.”
Nurse Thompson gives him this distrustful look. “Is that all you can come up with?”
“On account of maybe I’m in love.”
“Why are you staring at me?”
Faloon worries she may think his feelings are for her, and explains about Claudette. How though it wasn’t at first sight, it ballooned into a romance, and how she is so big-hearted and has faith in him.
Nurse Thompson looks like she doesn’t believe him. Or isn’t equipped to deal with love.
On Monday, Brian Pomeroy drops in unannounced. Having asked around in the joint, Faloon has learned this counsellor is hitched but has a reputation for affairs that get him in shit. He’s courting extreme danger by planning to go out with Adeline Angella, and the Owl is impressed by that.
Since lawyers don’t usually make house calls except with bad news, he assumes there has been a wrong turn in his fortunes. But no, Mr. Pomeroy comes into the little interview room with one of his rare smiles.
“Are you holding up okay?”
“Basically, I’m in love. How about you?”
“I’m on Prozac. You’re lucky to have Claudette cheering for you. I should be so lucky to have such a partner. She tells me Holly Hoover is very outdoorsy for a hooker, has a big boat, also a canoe. No one saw them, but they may have gone for a romantic paddle in the drizzle. Maybe across the inlet. I gather Ms. Hoover rents a place not far from Brady Beach.”
“Ever since maybe a month ago. A trailer.”
“I want you to tell me, Nick, man to man-ever get it on with Holly Hoover?”
“I am committed to another woman.” Faloon must brazen it out, he can’t trust loose mouths not to talk, especially this one, with the smell of yesterday’s whisky on his breath.
“Holly stayed overnight at your place. Good-looking woman, I hear.”
“Whatever you’re insinuating, Mr. Pomeroy, I am in denial. She just rented a room.”
Pomeroy grins in a winking, skeptical way, then jolts him with good news: “Arthur Beauchamp is going to take you on.”
It’s as if the clouds have parted and the sun is shining on Faloon. In this elated state, he listens to how some of his colleagues visited Beauchamp and pleaded his case. Coming out of retirement for Faloon is such an honour he feels a lump in his throat.
“We’re bringing you back to court tomorrow. I may not be able to help him much, because I’m having a few family problems.”
“I figured it was something like that, Mr. Pomeroy. You never even got around to asking if I did it. I never even…”
His hand says halt. “I want you to listen carefully, Nick, because I’m going to put a situation to you. It goes like this: Nick Faloon and Eve Winters strike up a conversation over dinner at the Breakers. She finds him droll, interesting, a character. Maybe he’s not a stud, but as a psychologist she sees beneath the surface. She wants to celebrate her strenuous hike with something more interesting than amateur night at the local, she wants to do something quirky and daring and totally off the wall, because she’s that kind of gaclass="underline" she’s into experimenting, she’s innovative, curious, fascinated by all aspects of human sexual behaviour. So she asks Nick to wander by later to share a bottle of wine. And of course they get it on.”
“Only a baboon’s going to buy that, Mr. Pomeroy.” He wonders how much Prozac this fixer has been doing. “This was a very refined lady. No way she would stoop to hustling a low-class citizen like me.”
Pomeroy keeps on with his scenario. “She forgets to lock the door when Nick leaves, and the prowler strikes.” Finally, his voice trails off with the absurdity of the proposition.
“Mr. Pomeroy, I don’t even want Claudette to know that idea ever got mentioned. Not to be personal, but…maybe you should be getting help with your marriage? Like, ah, maybe a relationship analyst like Dr. Winters?”
“Thanks, we have one. Except that I’m the outsider in their relationship.” The lawyer is showing emotion and has to pull himself together. “Anyway, this brings us to the ironical possibility that you, too, were victimized on April Fool’s Day.”
“I am listening.”
“Someone may have planted your seed in the victim. The someone we have in mind is Adeline Angella.”
Faloon isn’t startled, he’d played with the thought but rejected it-there wasn’t much sense to it, or any motive. Unless Angella was offended by what he testified in court, implying that after the big sexual come-on she wasn’t that hot in bed.
“You used a rubber, right, Nick? That’s what you said in court.”
“She says not, but on God’s word, Mr. Pomeroy, she provided it. She went to the bathroom, came back with a Trojan.”
“Her version is that she begged you to put on a condom as you held a knife to her throat, and you refused.”
“What I was holding was not a knife.”
“And what happened to the skin?”
“I don’t know, it was the wrong size, too big. If you have to know, Mr. Pomeroy, I don’t have very much circumference in that department. Somehow it kind of slipped off and got stuck up there.”