Easy to Like (16 page)

Instinct drew him into a ball. While
this did the trick of protecting his organs, it also made him tumble faster. He
was rolling, bouncing, into a crevasse. That he was plunging into a ravine over
which the Rainblatt shack was cantilevered became known to him only in
retrospect. His endless falling was so unexpected that Elliot judged, even as he
was being pummelled along the way, that he was actually experiencing not a
physical event but some cerebral catastrophe, some stroke or embolism that made
him feel as though he was falling into a cut in the earth.

Coming to rest, abruptly, on his back,
winded by the unyielding planet, he thought about the barranca at the end of
Under the Volcano
. He looked up, waaaaaay up.
Unlike Lowry's consul, however, he was alive, and no dog appeared to have been
tossed in after him.

What sort of tithead built on the edge
of a ravine? The answer smirked down from the crown of lights a hundred feet up:
a Rosedale tithead with more money than sense. He sat up. Nothing broken, but —
for as Elliot looked into the gloom he saw a hairy, semi-erect ape clutching a
bottle of wine — perhaps head trauma.

No. No. There was a very real creature
not six feet from him. It studied the treasured Isabelle d'Orange for a moment.
It looked at Elliot. It pointed its index finger at him like the finger was a
pistol. It drew back the hand, as if starting to put the weapon back in a
shoulder holster but stopping short. It employed the rigid digit of the gun hand
to push the fragile cork easily down the neck. The pressure propelled a gush of
scent into the air. Elliot could smell the wine, its celestial violets, only the
length of a man away. Cautiously, Elliot stood. The creature put the bottle to
his head and chugged. He was thirsty. The cork within the bottle was tossed
about by the currents made by the rapid emptying of the contents and the
consequent backwash of breath and spittle. It brought to Elliot's mind the old
flow indicators on the sides of gas pumps, the balls dancing around in their
transparent dome. The creature downed a third of the liquid in one go, ceasing
with a smack. It then held the bottle out to Elliot as an offering, a suspension
bridge of saliva from its lips to the bottle's own mouth. Elliot was tempted but
finally shook his head, declining what was surely a hot herpes Slurpee.

“Who the fuck,” the creature asked, hot
breath condensing into billows in the cold air, “are you?” The hairy thing was
inadequately dressed in a wollen lumberjack shirt that might once have been red
and black. Its trousers were lacquered stiff and shiny with oily grime. The head
was shaggy, the mop morphing into natural dreadlocks, face bearded. It wasn't
nearly as tall as Elliot but was considerably more muscular — twice Elliot's
width at the shoulders.

“My name is Elliot Jonson.”

“Johnston, hey?” The creature took
another pull from the bottle. He held it back so as to scrutinize the label and
said, as if reading from it, “What's your business with that cunt
Rainblatt?”

“I'm a dinner guest.”

“I pass by every so often, wait for
that dizzy motherfucker to come down that bank like you did.”

“You've not thought of calling, leaving
him a message?”

“Out for a smoke, were you?”

“Yes,” said Elliot, thinking that a
cigarette would actually be a plausible, if frowned upon, excuse for his
absence. He could say it was pot; people were usually better with that than
tobacco. Certainly no one would believe that he had been detained by a
sasquatch.

“Wait . . . Elliot
Johnston . . . I know that . . .”

“There were notices regarding my
appointment in the papers. It's ‘Jonson,' by the way, J,
O, . . .”

The creature started, going into a
slight crouch — whether an offensive or defensive posture, Elliot couldn't
say.

“YOU!” growled the creature. “You're
the new Heydrich!”

“I'm the new vice president of English
television, yes. But I'm not a ‘new Heydrich,' I've got my own agenda,” Elliot
said, thinking again that it was really time he did get some sort of agenda.
“And you are?”

“Benny Malka. I'm an entertainer.”

Malka . . . Yes,
Elliot
recalled reading about him in the paper on his ill-fated flight from LAX to
Paris. Show cancelled, rumoured to be living as a wild man in the
ravines . . .

“I've heard of you,” said Elliot.

“Seen my act?”

“No. I've lived in California for many
years. You wouldn't have a reel, would you?”

This angered Malka, who lunged at
Elliot. They were less than a foot apart.

“I don't keep one with me in the
goddamn ravine! The raccoons could give a shit.” Malka smelled like Spadina on
garbage day. “There should be tape at the Corpse. But if it turns out they've
been bulk-erased, you could try my agent.” He took another deep pull of wine. “I
don't know whether it's because I've been drinking the dregs from blue boxes
but . . . this wine, it's . . .” Malka could
not find the words.

“I should be returning to the party. I
promise I'll look at your tape,” said Elliot, with no intention of ever doing
so.

“You wanna hear my pitch right now?”
said Malka. “Talk-show format but —”

Elliot turned to the steep incline,
beginning his climb back up to Rainblatt's. “I would love to
but . . . I don't want to be rude to my host. Look, why
don't you send me a one-sheet,” he said.

“I just might do that, Johnston.”
Elliot heard Malka finish the bottle and toss the empty into the bushes. “I warn
you, no one has ever left the CBC on good terms. I'll keep a spot warm for
you.”

There was distance between them now, so
Elliot thought it safe to call out, “Have you considered radio?”

“Been there, fuck that,” shouted
Malka.

The soup bowls had been swept
away and a course of fish, skinless and white, was being set in place as Elliot
returned. Hazel was putting her hand over her wineglass, declining a
Saint-Aubin. She caught Elliot's eye and with a most discreet flick of her chin
indicated that he should look down at his jacket. There was a terrific tear in
the left panel, no doubt sustained in his fall down the ravine. He took the
jacket off and folded it to conceal the rip. Hazel managed to grin at him
quizzically in such a way that only he was aware of it. Willed light in her eyes
implored him to be careful. Yet the corners of her mouth twitched, betraying
delight that he was up to some secret mischief.

“. . . isn't that so,
Elliot?” she said, once he was seated. “Programming next season right now.” Her
phasing suggested he'd been there all along. She knew her social witchcraft.

“Thinking about it constantly,” Elliot
said.

“It would be impossible,” said Marshall
to his fish, “to do worse than your predecessor.” He looked up at Elliot. There
was suspicion in his gaze. He, perhaps alone, had noted Elliot's lengthy
absence. “Unless one tried to.”

Some of the dinner party took their
coffee in the living room while others stayed at the table. It was relaxed.
Elliot had finally cooled down from his ravine adventure. During the main course
he could feel his shirt wet against his back. Only Hazel and Marshall seemed to
suspect he'd been up to something and so, to avoid the latter, Elliot took a
seat on a couch next to Patrick Cahill. Alas, now, when Elliot would rather the
matter forgotten, Cahill deigned to answer Elliot's earlier questions about the
wines.

“So Victor told you that my order have
a presence near Avignon.”

“A monastery?”

“Yes, though I am not a monk
myself.”

“Get out more, do you?”

“We also maintain a cottage, formerly a
hermitage, near Uzès. Do you know the town?”

“Know it well,” said Elliot. “Lovely
spot.”

“There is a caviste there. He
recommends the wines to me. I am not a man of means. Our order still has several
hectares under vine. We make some sacramental wine; otherwise, the grapes go to
various winemakers. I don't know the details. We get so much of this and that in
compensation. There is some bartering.”

“Your caviste is knowledgeable.” Elliot
knew he should drop it but could not resist. He saw from whence the Isabelle
d'Orange came. “I noticed some obscure —”

“Like?” Cahill said, too quickly.

Elliot was going down a dangerous road.
He veered. “What does one look for in a good sacramental wine?”

“Smooth transubstantiation.” There was
nothing in Cahill's tone to tell Elliot whether or not he was joking. The
Farinist nutters back in Paso were big on transubstantiation, believed the dough
they donned could turn, like the host, into the flesh of Christ, and so
protected them like godly armour.

“Your order, your religious
order . . . ?”

“The Clementines.”

“I've not heard of them. Mostly found
in France, in the South? Or the Maghreb?” Elliot said, thinking of the source of
much of the tiny citrus.

“We've a centre, for study, here in
Canada. In Niagara. We had vineyards there as well, but I'm afraid we had to
liquidate them to cover court settlements with . . .” Cahill
hesitated.

“I'm originally from Newfoundland.”

“So you know.”

“I understand a St. Pat's dancer could
be hard to resist.”

“Patent leather shoes, short pants, and
a tartan sash. Lucifer himself could have tailored such temptation.”

“I've been meaning to drive down to
Niagara, see some of the wine country here. I myself —”

“We're having a retreat in three weeks'
time,” said Cahill.

“I couldn't.”

“No?”

“Well . . . ‘wouldn't' is probably truer.”

“Do you not have faith?”

“Faith? No.”

“I should have thought that would be a
qualification for your position. It was in the past. I have personally given
counsel to many senior CBC executives. I was for a time a consultant for
religious programming.”

“The slack has been picked up by
cable.”

“No, sir. Cable is not to blame.”

“I thought cable was always to
blame.”

“The cause is adoration of the devil,
and the consequent decline of the West.”

“Oh.”

“Granted,” Cahill said, expelling a
breath, “the fractionalization of viewership has some role.”

“That's all I was saying.”

“It's not like having some spiritual
programming on Sunday mornings is going to bump a hot new show.” Cahill's tone
had changed completely: he was now another petitioner. “We'd only be displacing
shows about gardening and house renovation.”

“The new, secular religions?”

“I think you will find that Canadians
are becoming more pious, not less.”

“You're a Catholic, so you would be
inclined to —”

“I'm no Roman!”

“Oh . . . I am so
sorry, I thought . . .”

“I belong to the true Catholic Church,
not that of the Roman antipopes.”

“I don't follow.” Elliot was genuinely
lost.

“We do not recognize the papacy that
returned to Rome from Avignon. We remain faithful to the church of Clement VII
and the popes of that line.”

Elliot smiled and nodded, trying to
show that he took all this as interesting but not terribly significant. Cahill,
though, was staring at him with undisguised menace, as though now, having
revealed a dangerous secret to Elliot, he might need to ensure his silence.

Elliot related his
conversation with Cahill to Hazel as he drove her home.

“So nothing to do with fruits at all,”
he said. “Clementines after Clement VII.”

“He
is
a
most disturbing man. You said as many words to him tonight as I have in my
entire life,” she said.

“I've spent years looking for this lost
grape variety, Matou de Gethsemane, and I think there is a chance that Cahill's
order of monks cultivates it. I might have been looking on the wrong side of the
Rhône River.”

“How nerdilicious. What's so special
about this . . . Matou de . . . ?”

“It's thought to add elements that
are . . . cranky, in a good way; it lightens wine that can
be too heavy, works against the sense of sweetness that high-alcohol examples
can have. It's a difficult grape and brings all the wrong things, but it gives
the whole picture a kind of asymmetry that makes it more interesting.”

“Where the hell did you go?”

“The Vaucluse, mostly, between Avignon
and Orange, but —”

“No, I meant during dinner. You
disappeared.”

“I stepped out back for some air.”

“I told Victor you'd snuck out for a
cigarette. He does all the time. Or did, before his inner-ear thing.” Hazel
said, looking out the window at the city. “I could go for a smoke about
now.”

Elliot wished he had one to offer.

They arrived at Hazel's immodest digs.
One of two swinging gates opened, suggesting that Hazel had pressed some remote
control device in her clutch. Elliot was curious about the house and Hazel's
domestic arrangements and hoped she would invite him in. But she was half out of
the car before she said “Thank you, Elliot.”

“You are welcome, Hazel.”

Hazel was standing on the pavement. She
bent down so she could look within Elliot's car.

“What happened to your jacket?” she
asked.

“I slipped on the grass when I went
outside.” Elliot gave her the answer he had prepared.