Arthur’s elevator stops for a pair in cycling gear. “Yay, Gwendolyn,” one says, admiring his T-shirt. When he steps outside into the crisp morning, he finds the seawall busy with runners, joggers, walkers-simultaneously disgorged from their buildings at 6 a.m., a clockwork emigration. He will not be at ease in the city, with its spurts of energy, an unnatural place where all that grows has been planted by man.
Nor does he expect to feel relaxed in the courtroom, Kroop or no Kroop. Again, he worries that his craft has corroded beyond repair. But Doc Dooley was encouraging. “The well-exercised mind doesn’t cease to work at sixty-eight. Your skills will return as if they never went away.”
Mens sana in corpore sano. He pictures Emile Van Doork stumbling from a hotel room after successive jolts: seeing Cat naked and helpless, finding he was duped. His own heart must stay combat-ready. He has a trial to win.
He attacks the seawall promenade.
“I bear bagels,” says Brian Pomeroy. He has caught Arthur fresh from the shower, swaddled in a towel. “Though you are wet, I am dry. I have taken the cure.” He is chipper and tanned. He sweeps into the kitchen, surveying with approval its aesthetics, its gadgetry.
He has brought orange juice, and pours a glass for Arthur, then vigorously sets to mastering the coffee machine.
“That Arizona clinic has performed a miracle,” Arthur says.
“The Tough Love Health Club. Middle of the desert. Nowhere to escape, nowhere to run to, you stick it out or die.” He finds a bagel slicer. “Ever been in a dry-out centre, Arthur?”
“I lasted three days.”
“Tough Love comes with brutal therapy. The screwing around with other women, the guilt, that’s what led me to drink. The resident panic mechanic decided I have some kind of overactive testicular drive complicated by hedonistic impulses. Or some shit like that. I have to control it, it’s that simple. Easy to do if I stay off the behaviour-altering chemicals.”
“Splendid. Come with me to an AA meeting. A booster shot, best taken at least twice a week to start with.”
“Sorry, I’m not religious. Call me when they set up a chapter for the godless. I can stay off the gargle on my own, Arthur, I don’t need help from a higher power-you’ve got to find the strength within, that’s what they teach at Tough Love. And I can feel it, brother, I can feel the power.”
Arthur won’t nag him. Maybe he is one of the rare ones and has the strength. Maybe the boozing was a response to stress. That also seems to be lessening.
“No more secrets. I told Caroline the whole story, my secret agent role. I’m back in the neighbourhood, house-sitting for friends down the street. Next stop, a workshop on Cortes Island. Caroline and I will be with five other couples, under the baton of a relationship guru recommended by Lila. Intensive is the word for this sort of circle jerk. We’re expected to pour out everything, our bottled feelings.”
Arthur can’t imagine confessing his traumas and failings to strangers. He wouldn’t know where to start. He imagines himself listening with a sick grin as Margaret advertises his plodding ways, his oppressive formality. (“He wasn’t such a drag when I married him,” she says tearfully.)
The coffee machine bubbles merrily, hisses steam, produces frothy coffees. They take their mugs and bagels to the living room, which has a Japanese motif, like the bedroom but without the touch of Eros. Brian sits on a tatami rug and asks, rhetorically, “How in hell have we managed to get to day one of a murder trial without a client?”
Not a call or postcard. Claudette hasn’t heard from him either. The French police seem not to be trying hard to find him. The death of Emile Van Doork has been written off as due to natural causes, and fraud and theft aren’t a top priority.
“If Nick promised to call, he will. He hasn’t because he’s lying low.” But Arthur’s optimism feels strained.
“What if he’s dead? Ever heard of a stiff being convicted of a crime?”
“If he’s dead, a body would have been found. He’s scared and on the run.”
“Maybe he should stay on it. How did Captain Bligh crash the party?”
“Somehow I must have offended the gods.”
“Any chance of bypassing the old bugger?”
“Minuscule.” By now, Arthur is almost costumed for work, a three-piece suit. He picks up his briefcase.
“Don’t forget your phone.” Brian is looking into the bedroom, the cellphone on the night table, with its confusing instruction booklet. Arthur has been powering it up.
He succumbed to the importuning of friends. The phone promises him easier access to Garibaldi, to the defenders of Gwendolyn Valley, even to Faloon when he attempts contact. It can’t be that difficult to master. He has broadcast the number on the island.
“Is Hubbell kinky?” Brian is studying the Kama Sutraesque prints.
“I suspect he’s trying to be hip.” Hubbell is of an age with Arthur, and about as lacking in libertine leanings. Bullingham would have a fit.
It is Bully himself he encounters as he and Brian ford the fountains and pools of the piazza outside the tower housing Tragger Inglis Bullingham. Every morning at nine the old man trundles off for scones and coffee at the Confederation Club, where he and his cronies complain about the state of the world.
“Glad to see you still know how to knot a tie, Arthur.” He acknowledges Brian, shakes his hand hastily, avoiding prolonged contact with such rabble. “You won’t have much fun with Wilbur Kroop and his ill-fitting dentures, but good luck anyway. I have made Riley available should you need case law. When you have time, pop in and we’ll talk about the Wilson case. Chairman of Brunswick Trust, dispatched his wife-allegedly of course. Set to go this fall, Cleaver’s maintaining a holding pattern until you’re available.”
“Don’t hold your breath, Bully.”
“Nonsense, you’ve had a long-enough vacation.”
Bully has never been known to take one, and holds with suspicion anyone who does. He won’t listen to further protest, and sets off for the club.
Arthur and Brian carry on to the mezzanine, to Roberto’s hair salon. Arthur has entrusted his hair to Roberto since he was a barber named Bob with a striped pole outside a homely two-chair shop. Now he’s a stylist and operates from a parlour of elegant yet restrained taste.
There is much tsk-tsk’ing as he examines the tangle of whiskers and hair. “We must do away with the beard. It detracts from the commanding nose. It is such a power symbol.”
“Cyrano,” says Brian, not looking up, studying the models in an Italian fashion magazine.
“The Cyrano look, si, perfecto. Swordsman of the courts. The moustache can stay, it gives accent to the nose.” Arthur bows to his will, and tufts begin to fly.
“You on top of the jury roll?” Brian asks. A panel of sixty will be showing up, homemakers and plumbers and shoe sellers culled at random from voters’ lists. They’ve been well picked over, most having served on at least one jury during this assize. Arthur would have preferred them fresh and innocent-experience breeds cynicism, distrust of the system.
“Watch out for three, eighteen, thirty, and fifty-one. They were on the Michaelson jury.” A contentious conviction last month. One ought not forget Shakespeare’s counseclass="underline" The jury, passing on the prisoner’s life, may in the sworn twelve have a thief or two guiltier than him they try. It is not thieves, however, whom Arthur will worry about, but the overly righteous and stern.
Brian’s phone rings. “You have reached the Sixth Sense Law Office. We know who you are and what you want, so at the sound of the tone, please hang up…Of course, Lila, I knew it was you…By your laugh, I’m reminded of the bells of St. Mary’s…No, not a drop…Yes, it’s been suggested, but I’m not AA material, not clubby enough…Sure, if you have some ideas…Always willing to listen…” He takes his phone outside, lights a cigarette.