Mind Games (19 page)

Tell me about yours, Allis. In your flights of nighttime fancy, I doubt you preside at a formal tea party. A different picture is coming into focus. For example, didn’t I observe a shorter hemline today, a naked knee? Quickly censored by a tug of a ringless left hand.

I shouldn’t have teased you – your blush spoke with the voice of a trumpet. But that was likely prompted by the myriad influences that come into play when marriages are in stress. I don’t flatter myself. The so-called rebound effect, when one is compensating for lost love, operates more powerfully through revenge than desire.

But we are experts, you and I. We aren’t your normal vulnerable losers, we know how to deny temptation, we understand how the injured can behave irrationally. We acknowledge our feelings – but we accept the boundaries. Still, just in case, and because I know you’re eager to meet her, I’ll invite Dotty Chung tomorrow evening.

I’ve no good news to report on the quest for Chauncey Wilmott’s killer. I’ve spent some time at 312 Main, watching through a one-way mirror as detectives interviewed skinheads and homophobes, names culled from police records. Most had alibis. Many had records for theft and weren’t likely to have left behind a wallet with three hundred dollars.

Jack Churko spends almost less time working on the case than bemoaning the pressure he’s under from the frightened gay community, most of whom are staying off the streets at night. “An isolated case,” he says. Let us hope.

The dream. I was wandering alone in the streets of an Italian city – Bologna? – and from a museum or gallery I heard the unmistakable voice of Celestine Post, her challenge: “I dare you.” I knew, with that oppressive sense of certainty that dreams often generate, that Sally was with her, and that they were up to mischief.

I hobbled inside, my right leg dragging, and stumbled into a room strewn with abstract art – it was Celestine’s loft. Equally expressionist was the montage being played out on a mattress, where Celestine and Sally were assuming Karma Sutric positions. Yet they seemed to take no carnal joy in doing so.

I was overcome with a sense I’d been here before, that I’d witnessed this scene many times. I felt ambivalent, felt I should be disturbed, jealous, but instead I was resigned – but also aroused. In fact, I thought to join them, but I was unsure of the protocol: I was an outsider.

I awoke in an erotic sweat and limped to my coffeemaker.

Let us put aside the obvious: I haven’t had a sexual partner
for two months, so my night erections are becoming more frequent.

Given that my dreams have become a research tool at least as reliable as the
Farmer’s Almanac
, I’m tempted to subscribe to their latest divination: Sally is involved in a lesbian affair with Celestine Post (who, according to rumour, has enjoyed the occasional same-sex frolic). I’m not sure, however, whether Sally is merely a dilettante, an experimenter. I may not have lost her completely – in my dream she seemed to be more curious than passionate. I’m remarkably sanguine about the matter – maybe there’s a greater sense of diminishment when one’s wife is stolen by a man.

The dream may have drawn from events on Sunday, Celestine’s thirty-second birthday. My gift was a day’s sailing with Celestine and Sally and several of their friends: artists with a propensity for illegal substance intake. Both weather and winds were fair, and we crossed Howe Sound to rustic Gambier Island, where we had a pub lunch.

I suspect Celestine was treated to a snort or two of Freud’s drug of choice, because she became hyperactive on the return leg. She insisted on perching on my lap while I was at the tiller, teasing, whispering, “Getting laid much, honey?” “Or did you forget how?” Her lips tickled my ear. “Sally says you’re not exactly a stuntman in the sack – is it a medical problem? “With that, she slipped her hand between my legs, causing the inevitable reaction despite my efforts to pry her hand free. “Hmm, feels like there’s still some life down here.”

“Damn it, Celestine!” I looked quickly at Sally, who was sitting amidships, her eyes closed, enjoying the sun.

“It’s my
birthday
. Maybe I can teach you some new moves. I might save your fucking marriage.”

I’d let go of the tiller, and the jib was flapping. “Christ, Celestine! I have to put her back into the wind.”

She laughed and jumped up. “Coming about!” I yelled in a strangled voice.

After returning to home port, sour and tense, I let the others go their way, cleaned up the party mess, and, to burn away the testosterone, went for a ride on Vesuvio II, brother of the deceased (eighteen hundred dollars on my stretched Visa limit, but they agreed to swallow the GST). At midnight, racing down Creelman Street, I saw Celestine’s old Volkswagen van in the driveway; the house lights had been turned out.

I dare you
.

Let me describe the obscenity that took place Tuesday in the hearing room of the Broadway Medical Centre. I’d hoped Vivian had found the sense to drop the charge, but I found her in the hallway, dressed as if for a job interview, in subdued makeup and long skirt.

I limped past her into the room, and found Schulter, Mundt, and Rawlings with their heads together. The scrum quickly broke apart. A slight pinking of jowls told me they hadn’t been talking about the latest theories in rational-emotive behaviour therapy.

“Good morning, Tim,” Schulter boomed. “Bit of a bum leg? You seem to be favouring it.”

“I’m fine.” I would explain to him in due course how this happened, how my stalker went off the rails at the Pondicherry. There would be some embarrassed faces around here when the truth came out.

“We were just discussing a few matters of process that maybe you could help us with. We gather you and Werner had a little tiff.”

Mundt took on a penitent look. “I want it put formally on the record that it was all my fault, Tim.”

I may not have mentioned that Mundt phoned me a couple of days after his involuntary swim. An excess of the fine Merlot had influenced him to speak foolishly, out of turn. He abundantly deserved the reaction he got. Can we put it behind us?

“I’ll understand if you want me to remove myself,” Mundt said. “Herman and Fred can carry on – two is a quorum.” A
chuckle. “I have to lighten my case load anyway, the fall semester is in full swing.”

He seemed unduly eager to withdraw – but now I wanted him to stay. It struck me that the new allegations were too close to home; Werner had enjoyed unprofessional liaisons when in practice, so condemning me would be condemning himself. Without him I’d be left with Herman and his lapdog, Fred Rawlings, who at seventy-seven has long eased into the comfort of retirement and senility.

“Not to worry, Werner. Happy to have you stick around.”

Werner’s smile was strained. “Good. All’s forgotten.”

However oppressive, these stop-and-go hearings were beginning to entertain me, and I was curious as to how the next episode would play out. Vivian would quickly fall apart when confronted with the episodes of stalking and her public pronouncements that she was prepared to lie to this tribunal. They’d see her for what she was and feel compelled to apologize.

Irwin Connelly, my mentor, strolled in to a round of greetings and sat, leaning to my ear.

“Christ, Tim, you still don’t have a lawyer?”

“This is my favourite entertainment,” I whispered. “A lawyer would only derail it.”

“Do you know who they’re bringing as a witness?”

“An utterly confused woman by the name of Vivian Lalonde.”

“Yes, but first a certain Mr. Ivan Kolosky.”

My intrusive former landlord. Either out of stupidity or a need to blot out the fact of his existence, I hadn’t given thought to the damage he could cause. I was expecting to confront my accuser first, and through her to expose this sham. My mind raced back to the episode in my consulting room – what had Kolosky seen and heard?

“Very well.” Schulter was beaming. “Let’s hear from Mr. Kolosky. Fred, do you think you might fetch him?”

Rawlings looked blankly at him. “Sorry?” To boot, he was hard of hearing.

Louder: “We need Ivan Kolosky – he’s in the next-door waiting room.”

Rawlings rose.

“Hold on here,” I said. “What happened to the complaint about the state of my office?”

“Yes, of course. A marked improvement, according to Dr. Connelly. You’re to be commended, Tim. So there’s just this last little item of business. Ah, here we are.”

Kolosky was wearing a checkered suit and mismatched tie. He was told to be comfortable. He took a chair. He wouldn’t look at me. Vivian had turned this witness over to the authorities, Vivian Lalonde, who promised to lie for me.

Relaxing under Schulter’s avuncular manner of putting his questions, Kolosky left: no detail unturned. He described going to the building late on August 14 to determine whether I’d evacuated my office and to ensure it was locked. He found my outer door open and upon entering heard raised voices from the consulting room.

“The lady seemed to be protesting.” The defendant then emerged, pulling up his pants, a longitudinal scar of lipstick on his face. He saw “the lady” half-naked, hiking up her dress, and heard her describe me as an utter, total bastard.

And add this: While I was in the washroom, he asked her, “Are you all right, miss?” Vivian replied, “I feel totally used,” and strode out. It was then that he observed, scattered on the floor, Vivian’s nude photographs.

“Sir, you’ve been most kind in volunteering to come,” said Schulter. “Tim, I don’t doubt that you have some questions.”

Werner Mundt seemed to be straining not to smile. He’d never been so careless as to be caught with his pants down. Or with photographs of a naked patient strewn about his office.

Kolosky had made nothing up, and had painted a credible picture of seduction. I hadn’t fully considered the perils of circumstantial evidence.

I stood. “I will be hiring counsel. I’d like an adjournment.” My words rang hollowly, like guilt. I felt defeated and ashamed.

“Of course. I think that’s best, don’t you, Tim?” Schulter was all sympathy.

We adjourned until the call of the chair. I no sooner made my spineless way from the hearing room than Vivian pounced. “Timothy, what have I done? They won’t let me withdraw the complaint.”

In fury and exasperation, I roared at her – she was a sick, manipulative witch from darkest dungeons of hell. She backed away ashen-faced. I fled down the stairs.

I spent the rest of my day fuming at my desk, drafting a presentence assessment of a small-budget filmmaker who’d kicked a yapping dog at an outdoor shoot. I identified with him, felt a kinship.

James entered tentatively. “Ms. Lalonde is on the line again, sir.”

“For Christ’s sake, stop calling me sir.”

“My, we’re being quite crotchety. She says to tell you she’s done a terrible thing, and it’s okay if you call her names, she deserves it. She’d like to express these sentiments to you directly.”

“Tell her to choke on it.”

“I will do that, sir.”

She’d called three times that day, theatrical, remorseful, demanding forgiveness. All of which feeds my suspicion she doesn’t want a lawyer coming between us.

I asked James to call the firm of Pomeroy, Macarthur, Brovak, and Sage, and make an appointment. John Brovak had grown in my estimation as a result of his show of blunt skill at Victoria’s libel trial – hire a brawler, she said.

Brovak was able to see me the following day. His firm is in Gastown, in a heritage building overlooking Gassy Jack Square, named for the rowdy saloonkeeper whose statue can be seen
from Brovak’s cluttered office. The room smelled of stale cigar smoke and whisky fumes, the latter from an open bottle of malt and a half-filled tumbler.

He poured me a drink, and though it was mid-afternoon, I didn’t protest. Brovak was disappointed that I’d rejected a chance to further discombobulate Clinton Huff at the upcoming trial. His petition to the court to bar me from attending “ain’t worth ass-wipe”; it showed he was running scared.

“What’s with his fixation about you?”

I explained my theory: Huff senses I hold some mysterious power over him, that I might expose a fetish or some shameful event in his past. But another, more dangerous person was fixated on me, fastened to my skin like a leech. As I recounted my ordeals with Vivian Lalonde, Brovak listened quietly, except for the occasional grunt of sympathy. At the end he poured another whisky.

“Any chance this dame is wigged out enough to think you actually fucked her?”

I thought about that. Clearly, Vivian suffers a form of erotomania, a belief that I’m in love with her. Could she have persuaded herself that we connected sexually? Delusions can cement themselves into the psyche. (On the other hand, have I persuaded myself the act didn’t happen? Was it possible that in the frenzy of the moment I lost my head? No. That is inconceivable.)

“She’s definitely manufacturing. She’s obsessed, but she’s not close to being psychotic. Hell, she’d flunk a lie detector test.”

Brovak made a note. “She said she’d lie for you?”

“Her lies would be my truth.”

“You got witnesses to this conversation?”