Puts me in a sort of mood. . I hope I can study here. Six days of hell coming up: final exams. Why, oh, why did they set the preliminary hearing so close to exam time? I’m going to be frazzled when I take the stand.
Sorry, I’m all over the lot here. You wanted some background. Okay, I’m in my second year studying to be a lawyer, and otherwise I’m normal — a happy, healthy, wholesome twenty-three-year-old Canadian woman who loves her father and mother and kid sister, and happens to be seeing a shrink. I told you about that. Dr. Kropinski — he’s helping me work through the awful nightmares I’ve been having. Our secret, okay? That smarmy defence lawyer — what’s his name, Hatchet, Cleaver — he’ll use it in court. Claim I dreamed it all. Religion: Catholic, though I’m sort of lapsed. I wear that cross-on-a-pendant to keep the folks happy. My dad’s a mining engineer with the Goose Bay Copper Corp. — that’s a division of the Brown Group — and they live away out in Labrador now.
It’s through Dad I met my fiance, who is actually his boss, full name Clarence de Remy Brown, and I call him Remy — he’s a brawny, brusque businessman, a sort of constantly on-the-go kind of guy. I like him because he’s not spoiled, he’s his own man. No, I am not marrying him for his money, though I know somehow that’s going to come up in the trial. I’m sort of living with him, but not full time — you saw my hovel in Kitsilano. This is partly because his parents are strictly from the seventeenth century, but also because I need my own space. Remy isn’t exactly on the cutting edge of contemporary thought, either. But he’s, you know, secure. And he loves me. And I love him.
So what else? I like skiing, sailing, Chinese food, and going to the movies. Yikes, this is starting to sound like a high-school yearbook. Or maybe an ad in the personals column. Wishes to meet movie star with sense of humour. My extracurricular thing: amateur stage. Played Saint Joan this year. Yes, deah, it’s Sarah Bernhardt here. Otherwise, I go to classes five mornings a week. I’m not one of the wonks — I don’t spend all my afternoons in the library. I get my passing grades. Most of the time.
All right, which brings us to the subject of a certain, um, fringe-oid representative of the opposite gender, Professor Jonathan O’Donnell. He was — past tense — teaching me advanced property this year. Because of what everyone calls The Incident, he had to turn the class over to a loutish woman who picks her nose when she thinks we’re not looking. I’d rather have O’Donnell. Stare at him. Make him uncomfortable.
Did you know his father is some kind of British noble? Baron or duke, or some big deal like that. Pal of Margaret Thatcher, so you can see where Jonathan gets his right-winginess. He’s an incredible teacher, I give him that. He could get you interested in the most awfully boring things. Brilliant, I guess. You see him on the tube on the apres-news shows, reaming the Supreme Court for being too liberal. And I’m not going to pretend he’s some ugly-looking troll. He’s not, you know, what you’d call pretty- sort of ravaged-looking. He has this dark, moody thing — sort of like Remy, actually. Something vaguely dissolute about him — those deep lines on his face? Anyway, he started giving me the eye in the lecture room. I was a little flattered, I guess. I’m human.
The downside of all this was he always seemed to be picking on me, you know, like, Ms. Martin, please give me the ratio of Engelbert versus Humperdinck. I felt like some kind of special-needs kid. Give that poor girl extra attention.
And then he got so he would ask me to stay a few minutes after class on the pretext of talking about my work. I’d be all prim and proper, giving him the message as bluntly as I could, but I don’t know — was he getting it?
Then once he asked me into his office to advise me on quote career paths unquote. Which he hardly talked about at all. Personal stuff, instead, what I liked to do in my spare time and that sort of thing. Oh, gee, let’s see, I like skiing, sailing, and going to the movies. Kimberley Martin is this year’s Miss Conviviality and she wants to be a lawyer when she grows up. I have something awful to admit. I was a cheerleader in high school. Hope that doesn’t come out.
I’d see him on the campus a lot and I had this. . it was a notion — but it didn’t turn out to be so wrong — that he was stalking me. You know? Not like everywhere I go he’s on my heels, but sort of Hi, there, mind if I bring my coffee over?
At some point we finally got onto the subject of the diamond ring that I kept waving in front of his face. So I told him about Remy. Told him what a special person he is. Invited him to the wedding — by the way, it’s this fall, Patricia, and you must come, you can do your impersonations. Anyway, he never lost a beat. Kept coming on with those bedroom eyes.
So, getting to November twenty-seventh, the Law Students’ Association, the LSA- I’m chair of the social committee — planned to have a dance. Okay, strike against me: I did personally ask Jonathan if he’d like to come. But you know, it was a money-raiser; we were asking all the faculty, selling them tickets.
Remy had gone away for a few days to South America with his father — the family has some investments there — and wasn’t coming back until late that night. So I went alone — I can just see his lawyer making hay with that. O’Donnell’s defence has got to be that I was a willing party, right? Is he going to deny tying me up? The lying bastard, I want you to tear him apart on the stand, Patricia. So I danced a bit — we had a live band — and when Professor O’Donnell came in, he made his usual beeline, and he bought me a drink and I … well, I asked him to dance. It wasn’t like a waltz where he’d be climbing all over me.
I assume there’s going to be a great hue and cry about what I had to drink that night, so let me get my two bits in right now. I had exactly two rye and 7Ups at the dance. Don’t you love that drink? It’s so common. Now, the one he got me may have been a double, but I did not get loaded. Didn’t touch any of the pot that was going around, either. I don’t do drugs. Marijuana especially, I get too scrambled.
So, back to the dance. Well, Jonathan and I chatted a little. I was sort of interested in his background, how his father became a knight, or whatever he is. A viscount. Don’t think he cares much for him. As his son, he’s entitled to be called Honourable Jonathan O’Donnell, did you know that? Right. Honourable. I mean, he wasn’t putting on the dog or anything — but it’s sort of impressive, isn’t it? To us commoners.
Anyway, I was about to leave before the last number and I was on my way to get my coat when he magically materialized right in front of me. So we do the last set of dances, slow rock, uh-oh, I’m thinking, here’s the old high-school rub dance. But, you know, he was okay, kept a gentlemanly distance. He told me that the lecture theatre — these were almost his exact words — seemed to fill with a brilliant light every time I walked into it. That’s what he said. I remember thinking, maybe he’s not such a bad guy. Maybe a little crush on me, that’s all.
Then he asked me if I was going to the after-party.…
After a period of rain, a reluctant Apollo has finally spurred his fiery horses beyond the fleeing clouds, and today I have donned my coveralls. Steeling myself for the tasks ahead — a row of beans, a plot of potatoes (the carrots are in, the radishes are up!) — I light a cigarette and lean on my spade and contemplate my coming bounty, picturing it as the sylvan fields Virgil sang of. Fortunatus et ille deos qui novit agrestis. Happy is he who knows the rural gods. But my green reveries are interrupted by the noisy, belated arrival of Stoney and Dog, who show up — one month late — in a grunting rusted flatbed. My visitors look no healthier than their vehicle — both are bleary of eye.