Easy to Like (6 page)

In Hollywood, a producer's waning
enthusiasm meant a new writer. After Elliot was shown from the project, seven
more screenwriters were put on the case. Elliot ran into the last of these
scribblers not long after shooting commenced on the picture, and felt it safe to
reveal that the original premise had been misunderstood. This was a lapse in
judgement, for when the movie was eventually eviscerated by the critics and
tanked at the box, the credited writers, among whom Elliot was not, knew whom to
blame. (Unjustly, thought Elliot now: the first couple of lines to emerge,
haltingly, from Barry's exquisite lips bore no resemblance to anything Elliot
had ever typed.) Jesus, was it bad! Elliot pulled off his headset and turned
from the screen.

How long to Toronto? In his haste to
get on the flight, Elliot had neglected to bring his book or to score some
Bromazepam with which to knock himself out. He fished around again in the seat
pocket. There was the in-flight magazine, dedicated, as fate would have it, to
the Napa Valley. Elliot flipped through the pictures. Napa looked better than it
drank. It was a vile example of how the rich got richer, how dabblers, in
concert with some mercenaries out of UC Davis, managed to charge suckers over a
hundred dollars a bottle for their syrup. Three parts water to one each of vodka
and Ribena: voilà Napa Cab. The only thing worse was those bubblegum Pinots out
of Santa Barbara — Elliot could taste nothing but banana in those. In the year
after the movie
Sideways
came out, that was all
anybody served. Elliot despised obvious wines.

Coming to a feature article on Fred
Hanover and his Cab ranch, Elliot put the magazine back in its place and pulled
out instead the rumpled newspaper.

Elliot deduced he was looking at a
Central Canadian edition, for there seemed few stories from Canada's fringes.
The economy was fucked, but less so than in the USA. This was cause for several
columns of smug self-congratulation.

There was a wine piece, actually having
the temerity to recommend Canadian plonk. (Though maybe, with global warming,
Elliot reasoned, it was becoming possible to grow grapes to ripeness in the
north. It was certainly getting too hot in California.) There had not been any
serious Canadian wine when Elliot was growing up. There were concoctions that
were
made
in Canada — pinkish products full of
bubbles, called things like Baby Duck — though whether of grapes, it could not
be said. These drinks were considered a step below even the brand wines from
Europe, the Black Towers and Mateuses, though, in truth, they were probably not
that much worse.

All the new Canadian wines discussed in
the article were still named, like the Ducks, after animals of the boreal
forest: foxes and owls and wolves. Elliot's own label featured no tasteful line
drawings, no watercolours of the rows of vines on the estate, no portraits, no
critters, no elaborate wordmark, none of the branding that he had been told was
essential to success in today's marketplace. Elliot even insisted on employing a
bland sans serif typeface. Someone once wondered aloud whether the bottle
contained medicine. No matter, thought Elliot: his bottles wouldn't require
“packaging” because the content would speak for itself. And it did, but in a
plaintive voice. Or, as in the case of vintages 1997 and 1998, in the banshee
scream of a crack whore fighting off the police. Even 2002's early whisper had
become an agonized moan once the wine was in the bottle. The admixture wasn't
right. A touch, a seasoning, two rows' worth of Matou de Gethsemane in the
blend, for tension on the palate: that was the answer.
Then
Elliot's wine would sing.

He turned the newspaper's wrinkled
page. “Leadership Vacuum at Pubcaster,” said a headline above many column inches
of print and a small, mysterious photograph of a densely treed gorge. It looked
good as a sleeping pill.

“On Tuesday, CBC chairman Jean Bousquet
cut short a trip to France, where he had been attending the Cannes Film
Festival, to address the widening crisis affecting the public broadcaster's
English-language television service.”

Cannes ended months ago, thought
Elliot: must have been the TV market, MIPCOM. He continued to read.

“In a hastily called news conference,
Bousquet announced that he had, yesterday, accepted the resignation of Executive
Vice President of English Television Stanford Heydrich. ‘Stanford Heydrich came
to the CBC with a vision of renewal,' said Bousquet. ‘I accept his resignation
with great regret.'” Heydrich, apparently, had become embroiled in a scandal
stemming from the creation and scheduling of a new daytime chat program on CBC
television,
Afternoons with Mac
, slated to be hosted
by CBC employee Jill MacDonald — to whom Heydrich was romantically linked. Ms.
MacDonald was described as a sometime on-air personality who occasionally
provided weekend national weather forecasts for CBC NewsWorld.

“Mr. Heydrich,” read Elliot, “has
stated that he plans to return to the private sector. According to Mr. Bousquet,
an executive search for a replacement has already commenced. No interim VP will
be appointed.”

Heydrich's resignation had come at a
crucial time for the CBC, just as the fall season was set to begin. Moreover, a
gleeful sidebar explained, it was not the first such woe to befall the CBC that
year. In March, the highly touted, and reputedly costly, late-night talk effort
The Benny Malka Show
was cancelled due to
abysmal ratings. The eponymous host of the program disappeared soon after the
announcement. “Toronto Police investigated numerous sightings of Malka in area
parks and green spaces,” explained the caption below the photograph, “but were
unable to conclude whether he was even still in the GTA.” Reports that Malka was
living as a sort of wild man in the ravines near the Don Valley were dismissed
as urban mythology.

Elliot had grown up watching the CBC,
simply because it was one of only two stations available in his hometown. It had
never been much to get excited about but did possess a certain charm in its
inability to be slick. The CBC could do adequate, vaguely liberal but cautious
news and information, but its frequent forays into entertainment were
cringe-making. The CBC, maybe Canada in general, was too self-conscious. The
grown-ups couldn't pretend in a way that was second nature to Americans. With
his years in the screen trade, Elliot now believed that the best film actors did
nothing other than be utterly convinced by their own lies. The best performances
came from actors who merely thought they were, at the moment, the character they
were playing. They were dissociative psychopaths. They weren't method actors;
rather, they were method humans.

The CBC programs Elliot best
remembered, and then only fuzzily, were about nature; typically, documentaries
about the people and fauna of the north. Most memorable were the “Hinterland
Who's Who” public service announcements, produced by the National Film Board of
Canada for the Canadian Wildlife Service and dropped into plentiful unsold
advertising slots. Elliot could hum the forlorn flute part that signalled the
beginning of each one, and still knew that the muskox formed a circle to defend
against wolves (a strategy that a proved a failure against the rifle), that the
beaver's teeth were yellow and never stopped growing, and that the moose was the
largest member of the deer family.

It was quaint, really, that a vice
president of the CBC could be forced to resign for having fucked the weathergirl
and then given her a show as a reward. In the Darwinian world of television in
the States, it wouldn't have mattered until the ratings came in.

There were other stories in the
newspaper about sundry goings-on in Canada, stories of too small or too regional
an interest to have attracted attention outside the country. At least the
disgraced former VP of English Television had some excitement in his life. It
was a shame the CBC turfed him; he was the kind of leader Canada needed.

The paper had done the work of a couple
of Lectopa. Elliot dozed off.

“
BIENVENUE À TORONTO
said the
voice over speakers the moment the plane's wheels finished bouncing on the
runway at Pearson. But it was only after waiting another hour and a half on the
tarmac, waiting to be assigned a gate, that Elliot set foot on his native soil,
or at least its flooring, for the first time in more than a decade.

His scheduled connection was tight. He
jogged to his departure gate. Studying the ticket for the next leg, to Paris, he
saw that he was again assigned to the back of the bus. This time he took it up
with the ticketing agent at the gate.

“There was even room in business
class,” he complained of the last flight.

“Can I see your ticket, sir, and your
passport.”

She was the youngest Air Canada
employee Elliot had met that day, but she looked tired. She picked up the phone
and said something Elliot could not make out. This was Canada. Elliot felt
himself relax, his shoulders dropping. Action was finally being taken. Business
class. To France.

“So you've managed to sort it out? I'd
prefer an aisle seat.”

“I'm afraid not, sir,” she said.

“But it's —”

“The issue is not with your ticket,
sir. It's your passport.”

“What about it?”

“It expires in six days.”

Elliot snatched the document back from
her hands. It was true. In the photo, taken but five years earlier, Elliot
looked a decade to the good, less drawn, eyes reflective. Those were happier
days; the first bottlings of Locura Canyon were nearing early maturity and
would, Elliot mistakenly believed, soon to be ready to show. Lucky Silverman's
EA was telling him that the coverage on one of his scripts — none other than
The Feinting Spell
— was positive. Lloyd Purcell
had a thing that was sure to go with HBO and had guaranteed Elliot a couple of
episodes. Patricia Franchini from Warner was asking whether he had time to take
on an adaptation of a hot chicklit property. None of it would ever happen.

“I've called Border Services,” said the
ticketing agent. “Someone will be here in a moment. If you wish to re-book the
flight, please call 1-888-247-2262.”

His Border Services escorts fancied
themselves cops but were, in the main, too fat for a beat. Elliot dared not make
a crack; he could tell from the way they carried themselves, and from the number
of African and South Asian women sitting around the office weeping, that they
were drunk with power. For an interrogator Elliot drew a blockhead — once of
Newfoundland, judging from his accent. The fellow typed some details from
Elliot's dated papers into a computer. The profile the machine produced must
have been particularly dull, for the bulky official yawned, an effort that
pulled his lips above his gums and aired his tonsils. He made no effort to cover
his mouth.

“Why would you change your name from
Johnston to Jonson?” he opened.

“Lot of Johnstons out there, my name is
my business. I'm my own brand.”

“And you go by your second given name,
Elliot?”

“That's correct.”

“Pierre Elliott Trudeau?”

“He wasn't yet a public figure in
English Canada when I was born, he was still just another anonymous Jesuit
Franco-ist, catholic in his sexuality.”

“What?”

“Or perhaps by then he was a socialist
playboy. I went to university in Montreal, and my Québécois friends, they kept
changing the story.”

Mr. Border Services took a moment to
simply stare at Elliot and scowl before returning his gaze to the computer
screen.

“What's a bayman like yourself doing
down there in Tinseltown?”

“I'm sorry?” Elliot said, though he
well understood the question.

“What's wrong with Canada? You have a
problem with Canada?” He was leaning back in his chair and pushing his gut
toward the roof. Was he displaying the great mound in an attempt to somehow
intimidate Elliot? Maybe he was doing some sort of exercise to try to reduce the
thing. He remembered his agent pushing his belly into his desk. Maybe it was a
new exercise craze.

“No, not at all. Why would you even
suggest such a thing?” Elliot said.

“You've been living down there for
years. Is there some reason you left Canada?”

“Yes, there is. I'm in the film and
television business. There wasn't a whole lot going on here. I got a green card
in the lottery, went from there.”

“I know someone who works in the
Canadian television business.”

“Lucky them,” said Elliot.

“You know a program called
The Littlest Hobo
?”

“I have a vague recollection.”

“My cousin . . .” He
thought for a second. “My second cousin, actually, he moved up here from Leading
Tickles in Notre Dame Bay. Up to Guelph it was. His daughter is — was —
married . . . they divorced . . . was
married to the fellow who owned the dogs that starred in that show.”

“Dogs?”

“They had two or three that looked
alike, pack of Hobos.”

“I remember now. Alsatians, right?”

“German shepherds. Good show.”

A dog barked. Elliot convulsed. The
border guard tensed and congealed. In a moment he relaxed and grinned. He
slapped his wooden desk with an open palm.

“Fuck me,” the guard said. “Talking
about dogs!”

The dog barked again. The sound came
from a room beyond, might have passed a couple of walls, but travelled easily on
account of its deep pitch. Sourced from a bigger breed of cur, Elliot reasoned.
The heavy official came forward, leaning over his desk. “That's bad news for
someone trying to bring a souvenir back from down south. You should see 'em, the
expression on their face when there is this dog barking at their bag. And then
they realize they're caught. I've seen fellas shit themselves.”

“I can see how they might,” said
Elliot.

The agent moved back and straightened
in his chair. Perhaps he had completed his full set of gut thrusts.

“By comparison, your problems are
small,” he said. “You have to get a new passport.”

“Can you issue me something
temporary?”

The man laughed. “It's not a hall
pass.”

“But I have a ticket to Paris,” said
Elliot. The man now stood and turned around to a stack of filing cabinets; on
the top of these was a levered press into which he slid Elliot's passport. He
grabbed the lever and pulled it down with swift force. The passport was
Swiss-cheesed. He put the punctured booklet in a small plastic bag and then into
his desk drawer.

“The French would turn you back.”

“But —”

“Where will you be staying?”

Staying? Jesus, this could not be
happening.

“I'll wait at the airport.”

“Mr. Jonson, this is going to take
days, if not weeks.”

“No.”

“Yes. This is your fault. All you had
to do was read the expiry date.”

“I've gotten a new passport from the
consulate in Los Angeles. It didn't take more than a week, and that was in
another country.”

“You've obviously been away a
while.”

Elliot put his head in his hands. The
tile floor was speckled with something that Elliot's shuffling feet had
streaked.

“If it's going to take that long I
might as well go back to Los Angeles.”

“Mr. Jonson, you're not grasping what's
happening. You aren't going anywhere.”

Elliot sat up.

“No?”

“You can travel within Canada. That's
it. You could go back to the Rock for a visit. Back to Newfie?”

Elliot grasped it now.

“Fuck that. I'll stay here. I'll stay
here in . . .” Elliot had to think for a moment.
“. . . Toronto.”

“Have you been in Toronto before?”

“Of course. Years ago.”

“So. Where do you think you will be
staying?”

“In a hotel. Downtown, I guess.”

“Okay. There's a passport office on
Victoria Street. You won't make it today.”

Elliot looked at his watch. It was
true.

A Sikh chauffeur took him from
Pearson Airport to his hotel, the Four Seasons in Yorkville, via the Gardiner
Expressway, a downtown feeder. Everywhere repairs were being undertaken. The
asphalt was like a rope binding the city and coming unbraided under strain. This
eight-lane strip was as clogged with smoking vehicles as anything in Los
Angeles. It conveyed Elliot alongside the shore of an Ovaltine lake and
presented, from its elevation, a vista of the city's downtown. The place had
surely doubled in size since Elliot last saw it: the spire of the CN Tower now
seemed to rise out of an actual metropolis and its exhalations, rather than look
down upon a little city north of Cleveland. When the landmark came into view,
his driver sighed loudly. When Elliot said nothing, he did it again, more
theatrically.

“What is it?” Elliot asked.

“The Tower is no longer the tallest
free-standing structure in the world.”

“I didn't know.”

“Now what do we have? Ontario was
capable of greatness, sir. But with the manufacturing jobs going to China, we
have become a have-not province. Imagine our shame at this. We are like Newfies
now. How many are needed to pick peaches? I will end up back in the Punjab.”

To signal his disinterest Elliot opened
his window. He sniffed. He was possessed of a natural gift for smell that he had
refined in the cellars of Locura Canyon: making wine required, more than
anything, olfactory acuity. When he travelled he could place himself with his
nose. He guessed he could identify blindfolded Aix's telltale lavender and
Gauloises or Firenze's distinctive diesel and cooked fungi. The town of his
birth, St. John's, was easily known by the brackish and fecal hum of its
harbour. Eucalyptus and ominous woodsmoke told him Los Angeles's ground-level
ozone was about to be cut by the Red Winds.

Could he, similarly, recognize Toronto
by its tang? The atmosphere outside the airport terminal had been indistinct,
the fumes and hurried breath of transit everywhere. He'd hoped that, once en
route, he'd be able to sense something familiar from the open limousine window.
But the noxious billows of the road were in such concentration as to mask
anything natural. The air quality was as bad as in Los Angeles. Toronto had come
a long way, and, from the stink of it, it had come by car.

Having checked in and dumped
his bags, Elliot hit the street. He was in need of a glass of wine. He headed
for College Street, which he remembered as being the spine of a Little Italy.
When he was last in Toronto, the strip had housed a few serviceable restaurants,
and he hoped he could find a place that might offer the modest plate of
antipasti he desired.

The neighbourhood, while still
ostensibly Italian, had been buffed and deodorized by colonizing scene-seekers.
Where once were boisterous families of Calabrese and the occasional artist or
student, there were now throngs of poseurs. There was preening and posturing
and, most hopelessly, searching sideways glances to see whether anyone noticed.
Everyone was awaiting someone else's arrival, only they didn't know who that
person might be.

To be fair, you could see the
temptation. The scale and situation of the street were perfect for staging urban
adventure. The Los Angeles hipsters searching for parking on the wider avenues
of Silver Lake would covet such a prospect.

The couple of workingmen's bars seemed
more Portuguese than Italian now, but finally Elliot came upon a joint with a
promising menu and aroma and, owing to the stark lighting of the interior, an
absence of wannabe boulevardier. The coffee-with-cream beauty who took his order
explained that while there were no antipasti on the menu she was sure something
could be put together. The wine list was not as accommodating, so Elliot settled
on a tolerable, if internationally styled, bottle of Tuscan table wine.

Out the window, Toronto appeared to be
internationally styled as well, a condition its inhabitants undoubtedly mistook
for being cosmopolitan. Still, things had visibly improved since the '70s and
'80s. The diversity of the population, and the ease with which these hues and
shapes and manners mixed on the street, was something of a marvel. In Los
Angeles, people had drawn back behind their respective mud walls. Toronto, this
segment at least, wore its prosperity well, seeming not to have unconditionally
surrendered to the consumerism of New York or L.A. Livable, if unexciting. But
with excitement came trouble — and Elliot had quite enough of that.

Elliot knew he wasn't being as generous
as he might, that he held every émigré's conflicted contempt and nostalgia for
the home country. One had to adopt a sort of chauvinism to justify or
rationalize the decision to have moved on and, one hoped, up. Truthfully, the
food now before him was as good as any back in Los Angeles. The two salamis on
his plate were of the highest order, tasted to have been made by hand and dried
in the air in the authentic fashion disallowed by North American health
inspectors. The preserved red pepper, blistered sweet, was obviously homemade.
The olives were surely sourced from North Africa, a better choice in a pinch
than some mass-produced shite from Italy. The bread was excellent, a touch of
salt improving on its Tuscan model, and the cloudy oil was the kind of fruit
juice you found on the ground in Umbria. It was pleasant enough, the food even
giving the ordinary wine a lift. Elliot was content until, after twenty minutes
or so, he got the definite sense that the Norse thug tending the bar and the
register was squinting at him, sizing him up. It was making Elliot uncomfortable
enough that he called for his bill with a few glasses remaining in the
bottle.