Stung Read online

  Stung

  An Arthur Beauchamp Novel

  William Deverell

  Contents

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part One: Heat of Summer

  Chapter 1: Rivie

  Chapter 2: Arthur

  Chapter 3: Rivie

  Chapter 4: Arthur

  Chapter 5: Rivie

  Chapter 6: Maguire

  Chapter 7: Arthur

  Chapter 8: Maguire

  Chapter 9: Arthur

  Chapter 10: Maguire

  Chapter 11: Rivie

  Chapter 12: Arthur

  Part Two: Dead of Winter

  Chapter 13: Rivie

  Chapter 14: Arthur

  Chapter 15: Rivie

  Chapter 16: Arthur

  Chapter 17: Rivie

  Chapter 18: Arthur

  Part Three: Rites of Spring

  Chapter 19: Maguire

  Chapter 20: Rivie

  Chapter 21: Arthur

  Chapter 22: Maguire

  Chapter 23: Rivie

  Chapter 24: Arthur

  Chapter 25: Rivie

  Chapter 26: Arthur

  Chapter 27: Rivie

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Dedication

  To Jan, in celebration of the love we share.

  Always, truly, believe . . .

  Epigraph

  Chemicals sprayed on croplands or forests or gardens lie long in soil, entering into living organisms, passing from one to another in a chain of poisoning and death. Or they pass mysteriously by underground streams until they emerge and, through the alchemy of air and sunlight, combine into new forms that kill vegetation, sicken cattle, and work unknown harm on those who drink from once pure wells. As Albert Schweitzer has said, “Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.”

  — Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, 1962

  Part One

  Heat of Summer

  Chapter 1: Rivie

  1

  Friday, August 10, 2018

  So I’m in this gauche, fake-chichi pick-up bar on Queen West, all glass and glitter — it’s called (get ready to barf) the Beaver’s Tail. Five o’clock, and they’re streaming in, the lonely and the desperate, fleeing the cubicles and workstations of their corporate prisons. It’s a steamy mid-summer day, and the place already reeks of sweat and hastily applied deodorant.

  Picture this, a kind of selfie: Our heroine commandeers two stools, one with my bag on it, the other propping up my fanny. I am nursing a vodka martini and am perched at an angle to the bar, arms bared to neck, and legs to mid-thigh, by sleeveless top and short skirt, strap-on heels, looking cool, in control, not too obviously hooky.

  In a twenty-minute span I have sent off two applicants, slithering moves from snaky sales executives, calmly rebuffed with versions of I-am-waiting-for-a-friend.

  Now enters a more interesting candidate for the ineffable charms of Rivie Levitsky — he’s about six-three, manicured beard, longish brownish hair, square of jaw and shoulders, tucking in the tummy as he leads in two male shiny bums: sycophants, by their vibes, underlings to my tummy-tucking target. His suit jacket slung over a shoulder, shirt hanging loose. Distressingly attractive. Mid-forties, that frantic, omnivorous age on the cusp of dwindling powers.

  His pals find an empty table on the mezzanine, and he does a slow scan, then — no surprise here — targets my reserved stool on the pretext of ordering from the bar.

  “Oh, sorry,” I say as I grab my bag. “I was saving it for a friend who didn’t show.”

  And he goes, “He friend or she friend?” Giving me an up-and-down, all five feet, four inches.

  “Former friend of the male persuasion.”

  “He’s had rotten luck.”

  “Why?”

  “If he reneged on a date with you he either had a serious accident or a psychotic breakdown. Mind if I take up his empty space?” Deep baritone, suffused with sincerity, like a voice-over in a TV commercial for a pain ointment. “Your martini looks decidedly empty. My pleasure.”

  “My mother told me never to accept drinks from strangers.” Says the compulsive flirt. Comes with being aesthetically pleasing like my gorgeous mom, you do it because it’s sort of expected, you learn to enjoy the power.

  “Well, my mother taught me to respect the wishes of attractive young women who jump to the ridiculous conclusion I’m coming on to them.”

  I laugh, extend a hand. “Hi, I’m Becky.”

  “Howie. Howie Griffin. I come with a guarantee — I’m safe. I may be the safest guy in this room.” Loopy grin, minty breath, no wedding ring. Long, strong fingers, like muscular tentacles enclosing my hand. He’s really quite gorgeous, compared to the shots Doc took, mostly out of focus.

  “And what makes you so safe, Howie?”

  “I run security for a global. Canadian end of it, but they also send me on international troubleshoots.”

  He flips me a card: Howell J. Griffin, Director of Security Operations, Chemican-International, Canadian Division, corporate offices in a Bay Street tower. You can reach Howell by phone, fax, text, email, Skype, FaceTime, no mention of carrier pigeons. “For a sustainable planet,” that’s Chemican’s hysterical motto.

  I want this macher to think I’m in awe — wow, worldwide! — but I can’t pull it off. I tell him I’m Becky McLean, and I’m a pharmacist’s assistant. “It’s not very glamorous.” Nor is my real job, which doesn’t exist. My degree is in comparative literature, so of course I’m basically unemployed, except for ESL classes for Syrians.

  “Not very glamorous?” A glance down, thigh-ward, at the bicycle queen’s legs of steel. “I don’t know — glamour is mostly surface, isn’t it? Hides natural beauty and good taste. I’ll shut up.”

  I laugh. “Sure, I’ll have another one. It hasn’t been a good day.”

  “Hold that thought, Becky.” He orders “the same for my friend,” a Glenlivet and rocks for himself, and one each for his gawping friends up there. “I’ll be back biggety bang.”

  Biggety bang. Howie may not be radically hip, but he’s fairly smart and urbane. Unconsciously chill.

  The Beaver’s Tail is crowded now, standing room only, and Howie has to weave and squeeze, holding the two whiskies aloft as he makes his way to the mezzanine to look after his mates.

  They’re keen to exchange a few salacious sexisms about me, so his return is more biggety than bang. As he hoists himself up beside me, I can almost smell the testosterone. I hope he doesn’t entertain any antediluvian notions about the meaning of consent.

  A little musical ding as he touches his glass to mine. “Your imperfect day, Becky . . . Don’t feel you have to talk about it.”

  “You don’t want to hear.”

  “The friend who didn’t show?” Looking into the fathomless depths of Agent Levitsky’s darkly brown eyes.

  “Yeah, he . . .” I shake my head, look sad, flick back a strand of auburn hair. “How was your day, Howie?”

  “Oppressive. Desk was piled a mile high — I just got back from Peru. I have my Spanish, get along in Portuguese, so Kansas City — that’s our head office — has me handling Latin America, putting out fires.”

  My eyes widen, a low-key wow reaction. Ghastly.

  “So, given that your evening didn’t work out . . . got any plans?”

  “Not now.”

  “I’m not prying, but . . . let me speculate. Dinner date. He blew you off.”
>
  “You notched it — what am I, a crystal ball? Yeah, we were going to talk things out.”

  “I’ve been there, if it’s any consolation. Got laid off in April by the significant other.”

  Stage One done. Smooth.

  2

  So I’m twenty-three, half Howie’s age, but I’ve always had a thing about older men, maybe from my handsome hippie dad, but I got raped by a “mature” writer I used to admire, and . . . Let it go. Or it will eat you up. His next book bombed.

  Then I had a bad rebound with a professor who’d taught me nineteenth-century French lit and who was unbearably in love with himself. I am currently without a male companion, and needy but not desperate . . . sorry, Howie.

  He retains a gentlemanly aplomb through dinner: gracious, attentive, no flashes of masculine id. We’re in this nouveau Italian place he likes, on Bathurst. He does lamb chops and I stick to my casually observed green diet, a nutty salad. I keep it down to two glasses of Pinot Gris, he goes through the rest of the bottle. And talks. About himself.

  He’s a cyberhead, has a master’s in business computing. A jockstrap, handball, basketball, works out at Molloy’s Gym on upper Yonge. Season passes to the Jays and the Chamber Music Society, which seems a weirdly unlikely combination. Keeps a sixty-horse launch at his cottage on Georgian Bay, near a town with a name that goes on forever: Penetanguishene.

  His marriage bombed after fifteen years. A sports fan and a classical music enthusiast — sharing season tickets to the Jays and the Chamber Music Society wasn’t the answer to saving their marriage. No kids, but his ex has two grown boys from a previous relationship. He goes on at some length about missing them, seems sincere.

  You worry about loosened inhibitions, loosened hands, but the Pinot merely makes Howie a little soppy, carrying on about the ex, Maxine, his failed, brave fight to save their marriage — she left him for a concert violinist. Maxine is a cellist. Thus the chamber music tickets, I guess. Turns out he doesn’t use them, he’s more into jazz and seventies rock — tastes, he’s pleased to learn, that I share.

  I counter with my less intriguing ex-partner: a narcissistic doper who wrote cheesy pop songs.

  He gives me his loopy, lopsided grin. Kind of cute.

  Okay, that’s Stage Two, and now we’re off to his big apartment on Adelaide: uncoolly mannish, wood flooring that clacks under my heels, a honking big TV and stereo; CDs by Oscar Peterson, Django Reinhardt, Sarah Vaughan, and his 1970s rock, Stones, Pink Floyd, Santana, a lot of Dylan and some Cohen, whom I love.

  A misty seascape dominates one wall, with breaching sperm whales — which is beyond hypocritical. A baseball in a glass case, signed by one of his heroes.

  A big library dominates the opposite wall, adventure non-fiction but also spy novels, le Carré, Graham Greene, and, not shockingly I guess, Hemingway and Jack London, but also some high-end lit: Pale Fire, Under the Volcano. I’m shocked. And there’s Dostoevsky, Steinbeck, Rushdie, just for starters, and a whole section in Spanish: Marquez, Borges, Allende, many I don’t know. These books actually look read. Does he stock up from used-book stores just to make an impression with the ladies he fetches here?

  The kitchen is open to view, behind a bar at which he is pouring drinks. A viewette of Lake Ontario and the Islands from the balcony. A glassed-in office-in-home, tile floor, the door closed, likely locked, banks of computers in there, multiple screens, two filing cabinets.

  “We’re connected to every continent but one, and I’m working on Antarctica,” he calls, and I laugh dutifully. “I have a duplicate system at HQ but they want me ready for calls in the middle of the night when it’s noon in Cambodia or Belarus.”

  I hear myself going, “Awesome.” This is a word I’d vowed would never pass my lips.

  “We’re always worried about sabotage from one of the rabid groups out there.”

  I’ve made note that Howie has an alarm system, a keypad mounted inside the front door, but I didn’t catch the code he punched in to disable it. No way to tell if his inner office is also armed, no numeric pad, just a standard keyhole.

  I wait until he goes off for a piss before dumping out most of a mondo martini in the kitchen sink. I now have to present as a little tipsier than I am, which has the unfortunate effect of encouraging him, an arm around my waist as he leads me toward a couch. He’s pretty loaded, and I’m on alert — Danger! Assault Zone! — but I manage to detour him to the balcony, from where maybe neighbours could hear sounds of distress.

  Another grope, those tentacles touring toward my left tit, and I pull away. I’m all about leaving but remember who I am. Rivke Levitsky, known to pals as Rivie, and she’s tough, she’s smart, she can control the situation. So I remind him of what my mother told me about strangers and drinks. The word mother is magic, he backs off, maybe thinking of his own mom, who raised him to be respectful.

  “I’m not ready,” I say. But hope must not be extinguished, and I add a modifier: “Yet.”

  That soothes the pain, and he takes his flippers off me. “Of course. I understand. I apologize, I went too far.”

  So we sit apart, still outside, on his all-weather chairs, and I ask about Peru, confess to being poorly travelled, and he flaunts his exotic locales. Chemican has plants in Europe, the Far East, but mostly in Latin America. Amazonia is opening up, you’d love it there, Becky, it’s magical. Maybe someday if things work out I’d love to invite you down there.

  I’d as soon walk into a burning building with dynamite strapped to my back. Baseball seems a safe topic, and I get him going on his eerie devotion to the Toronto Blue Jays, who are “rebuilding,” and how he rarely misses a game when they’re in town, which they are next week, and maybe I’d enjoy a trip to the Dome with him, great seats, right on top of third base.

  I am a huge fan of this manly sport (I say with a straight face), catch the Jays on the tube when I can but can’t afford tickets as I’m saving every cent to help my dad, who’s on disability. He reels off a bunch of stats and averages, and did I catch that squeaker at Fenway, Smokey sending a walk-off boomer over the Green Monster, a parking lot shot. Fenway? Smokey? Green Monster?

  This is a tune I can’t sing, I don’t know the lyrics, so I prod him for a short story of his unexceptional life. An only child, small-town Ontario, his dad retired from his hardware store, mom from a flower shop. Rotarians, churchy, Tory. Salt of the earth. Bedrock.

  So with these embedded values, it doesn’t shock me that he finds escape from the boring normality of it all with mood enhancers. After establishing that I don’t have any attitudes against, he produces, maybe inevitably — something about him shouts cokehead — a packet of uncut blow, which he extols: “Never stepped on, unadulterated flake.” I tell him, sorry, it’s late, I have to work tomorrow. But I give him a teaser: “Maybe another time, Howie.”

  So with hope restored, but resigned to biding his time, playing the long game, he kind of staggers after me to the door, where I tell him by the way I have access at work to some dynamite behind-the-counter stuff. Howie is totally up for trying it. Maybe I’d like to go boating with him next weekend if the weather holds. Get high.

  I remind him I’m not into anything serious. Yet.

  He’ll call me, text me, the Rangers are coming to town. How’s Thursday? Yeah, I could really dig that, Howie. Take me out to the ball game.

  The Dome seems a safe enough venue, grope-free. I give him the number of my Becky McLean phone — a throwaway I picked up last week.

  He orders me a taxi on his corporate account. I thank him with a kiss, intended as a peck, but he returns it, a scratchy, failed effort. A pelvic thrust, a love message from his prodding dick. I peel away and go, “Let’s keep it friendly.” I don’t want him to think I’m cheap.

  3

  Saturday, August 11

  Our operations room is in the back of Ivor Antiques on St. Clair, near Keele,
west of the Stockyards. It doesn’t get much business, which is the way we like it. We usually enter by the alley, where no one goes except the occasional delivery truck, and always take our bikes inside.

  It’s a cluttered space, the big backroom, full of Ivor’s unsalables, my favourite being a worn rolltop, my own personal workstation. Wicker and horsehair. Buffets, bureaus, vanities. Japanese, Oriental, Moorish. An oak dining table with its wings up is where we gather, on Louis Quatorze replicas, to wrangle endlessly about direct action.

  Three comrades are doing just that as I stroll in, but turn silent, staring at me as, dripping sweat, I unbuckle my helmet and fluff out my hair, nonchalant, stringing out the tension.

  Oklahoma Joe, who is this tall, shy, stringy thirty-year-old data dink with a wonky face like a cleaved rock, has a worried look, but that’s basically his signature expression. Okie Joe, we call him, politically incorrectly. He’s our in-house geek, did a stretch with Google in Silicon Valley. While coding for them, he fell under the benign sway of Bernie Sanders, fled to Canada as the Trumpian mafia began restyling America as a fascist state.

  Lucy Wales is my best friend and is smart and wild and twenty-two and is currently an anarchist. She labels herself as post-left, believes in the propaganda of the deed — our escapade is right up her alley. She has her hands together in prayer, mocking the God she doesn’t believe in. Magenta hair, nose rings but no tats, dark vampish makeup. Quite pretty underneath all that. She’s my roomie — when she isn’t sleeping over with her gorgeous boyfriend in the warehouse squat he’s been camping in.

  Helmut (Doc) Knutsen leans back with his feet on the table, pretending he’s so fly and comfortable, which I know he’s not. Two clowns and a monkey on a trampoline couldn’t provoke a smile from this serious dude. Lucy and I have a thing for him nonetheless, another of my favourite older guys, sixty and sly as the Devil. Sort of sexy too despite the Einstein hair — he’s never heard of a comb. He treats us like we’re his grandchildren, though, doesn’t get it that we’d both like to jump him. He’s so old-fashioned he can’t conceive of that, can’t vault over the age difference.