Authors: Anthony Bidulka
suit with a blindingly white, wide-collared, man’s
style shirt and a string of pearls. Her black hair
was in a tidy bun at the base of her neck and her
eyes were disarmingly piercing as usual. It struck
me then that even though Errall had taken up
smoking again, I never smelled it on or around
her, just the sharp, mildly spicy fragrance she
always wore. I looked past her through a window
onto Spadina Crescent. The early morning snow
had left behind a sheet of white crispness.
“I really don’t know but I got the distinct
impression she was hiding something from me.
She kept trying to change the subject.”
“Are you sure Russell?”
Anthony Bidulka — 139
I shook my head despondently. “No, I’m not.
Maybe I’m being paranoid, too suspicious, a quirk
of my profession. I just don’t understand why
she’s even here, staying with me for Christmas. I’m
realizing how little my mother and I know one
another.”
Errall quirked her head to one side and said,
“Maybe that’s why she’s doing it.”
For a moment neither of us said a word while
Errall’s insight sunk in.
“You know what?” I finally said. “I can’t think
about this right now. Listen, this isn’t why I came
in here anyway. I wanted to ask you about Kelly,
to see how she is. I’ve been trying to call her but
never get an answer.”
Errall’s face became a mask behind which I
was almost sure she was hiding something. Why
was everyone doing that?
“No change. She’s just…well she’s in a funk
and she can’t get out.”
“Maybe she needs some help, Errall, maybe
Beverly could…”
“I know. We’re trying that,” she said in a short,
clipped tone.
“Okay.” I quickly acquiesced. Getting profes-
sional help was a private matter and I didn’t want
to stick my nose too far in. “Maybe she’d want to
come over to visit Brutus? I know he really misses
her and she must miss him. She can come over
anytime.”
Errall nodded but the look on her face seemed
doubtful. “Y’know, Russell, she needs some-
thing…some…tonic of some sort, something to
140 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t
give her a kick-start. She’s like a battery low on
juice—it wants to turn over the engine but just
can’t. I just wish I knew what it is she needs.”
I nodded and noticed Errall glance at her wrist-
watch. It struck me that she and I were living sim-
ilar lives. We each had personal issues begging for
our attention but were being pulled away by our
careers. Or…were we letting ourselves be pulled?
I jumped out of my chair and headed for the door.
Errall was already on the phone.
Chapter 8
UPSTAIRS IN MY OFFICE I grabbed a Diet Pepsi from
the refrigerator under my desk and settled in.
After making an appointment to meet later that
morning with Professor Marc Driediger, the con-
tact Anthony had set me up with, I updated my
suspect chart for the information I’d learned the
night before about suspect number one, James
Kraft, a.k.a. Jo. I then made some notes about the
landfill chase and last night’s tail by the blue car.
As I was still uncertain of the significance (if any)
of either event, I stuck them in the Herrings file—
the file I use for information I don’t know what to
do with but don’t want to lose track of. After I was
done I still had some time to kill before leaving to
meet with the professor so after again failing to
reach Kelly, I decided to revisit gays.r.us for
SunLover. After all, what else does a beach boy
have to do in the middle of winter but try to get
laid?
As I clicked my way into the now familiar
Saskatchewan gay chat room the thought
occurred to me that SunLover might be using a
different nickname. Chat rooms certainly provid-
ed a certain amount of anonymity, more so than a
bar or dating service, but I suppose even the best
disguises need to be changed every once in a
while. If this was the case with SunLover it wasn’t
good news for me. It would make it harder for me
to find him—but not impossible. No one calling
142 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t
themselves SunLover showed up in the chat room
the night before, but there certainly were chatters
whose bios loosely fit the description Daniel
Guest had given me. I decided it couldn’t hurt to
pay special attention to any fortysomething Brad
Pitt types.
The Saskatchewan room was much quieter on
a Friday morning than it had been Thursday
night. When I entered there were only seven other
chatters and four of them were from Regina, two-
and-a-half hours away. I studied the bios for the
remaining three but found nothing even close to
what I was looking for. The dialogue box was
quiet, even the seven in the room weren’t talking
to one another, unless they were doing so in pri-
vate. I kept the room open but began sorting
through my mail that Lilly had brought up and
placed on my desk. It was several minutes later
when I heard, “Bing!”
I looked up. I had a private message from
someone named Big Quill. We chatted for about a
minute. He was seventeen and smooth and want-
ing to get raunchy over the phone. I turned him
down as politely as I could and surveyed the cur-
rent crop of hopefuls in the main room. Sunny
caught my attention. His bio was blank so I sent
him a private message.
“Busy?” I typed out the standard opening line.
“No,” he came back with.
“How are you?”
“Okay thanks. Stats?”
“34, bl/gr, 6, 180, athletic, gd lkg. U?” I
described someone close to Daniel Guest (in case
Anthony Bidulka — 143
SunLover was into that particular type) but not
quite (in case he wasn’t into repeats).
“39, blond & green, 6.2, tan, 40 chest, 28 waist.
U in Stoon?”
“Yes,” I told him, I was in Saskatoon.
Everything looked about right for this guy to be
SunLover except possibly the age. Daniel said he
was in his forties or maybe a bit older, but that
was just a guess. “Where r u?”
“Same.”
“Wanna meet?” I asked brazenly. If only I
could be this ballsy in my real personal life.
“Okay. Do you have a place?”
Hmm. This guy used Bare Ass Beach in the
summer as his meeting place, but obviously had
none in the winter. I certainly didn’t want him
coming to my home. Then again, I suppose my
mother would be happy to have someone else to
cook for. “No,” I replied, “Any ideas?”
“How about we meet in the parking lot at
Confederation Mall?”
Huh? This was a new one. How would that
work? I guess I was still a newbie. “Sure,” I typed.
“Okay. Right now?”
That wouldn’t do. I had to arrange for Daniel
to be with me to ID the guy. I had no idea whether
he was free right now. Chances were he wasn’t.
“Can’t. How about early this evening?” That night
was the DGR&R Christmas party, but I’d have to
convince Daniel to join me in the parking lot
before hand.
“It’ll have to be late. I have a thing. How about
11:30?”
144 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t
Darn. Well, at least dinner would be over and
any dancing and drinking would just be starting.
“Okay,” I agreed, hoping I could deliver.
“11:30 Confederation Shopping Mall parking
lot.”
Suddenly I felt nervous and excited, like I was
accepting an invitation for dinner and a movie
with someone I had a crush on. “See you then.”
“You’ll be there?”
And now I felt bad. His question seemed
almost pleading, a little sad. He’d obviously been
stood up before, left sitting in a deserted parking
lot in the middle of the night, waiting for someone
who would never show up. At least I would
show up—just not for the reason he expected. Oh
well, a person had to accept certain risks when
arranging blind dates over the internet. “Yes I
will,” I typed back. I had to get going to my next
appointment. “Bye.”
“Bye,” typed Sunny.
Marc Driediger’s office in the College of
Education building was a small space overflowing
with paper in every form imaginable: books,
bound reports, loose-leaf, in binders, foolscap,
bright white, coloured, embossed and glossy, cov-
ered in longhand, typed on and scribbled on. The
man who sat behind an overburdened desk was in
his late thirties with a face and body that, despite
a valiant effort to thwart genetics, were thickening
with age. He had covered his jovial face with a
scruffy moustache and beard and his body with
Anthony Bidulka — 145
sedate clothes that looked as if they were about to
become too tight. Marc Driediger had a wide,
friendly smile, sparkling eyes behind wire-rimmed
glasses and a head of curly brown hair thinning at
the crown.
“Thank you for seeing me on such short
notice,” I said after I was seated on a chair recent-
ly rescued from beneath a stack of student essays.
“No problem at all. I owe Anthony tons of
favours.”
I wondered why but decided not to ask. There
are very few things I don’t consider my business,
so when I run into one, I pride myself in letting it
go. “I understand you know a man by the name of
James Kraft.”
“Yes, I do,” he said easily. “And I’m happy to
tell you about that, but not if I thought it might
somehow get James into trouble.”
“Is there some reason you think it would?”
He chuckled. “Anthony said you were clever
and that I should watch out.”
Bastard!
I gave him a clever smile. “James may be
involved in a case I’m working on. I’m interested
in finding out more about his character, his back-
ground.” What I was hoping to find out was if
James was the type of person who’d commit
blackmail. “Anything you could tell me would be
helpful. Anything at all.”
“Anthony probably told you James and I dated
a couple years ago?”
“No,” I told him. “He never mentioned it.”
Obviously James was into older men, first this
146 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t
professor and then Daniel, both more than ten
years older.
“Oh. Well it wasn’t for very long.”
Oh goody, I thought. No gay man ever had
anything good to say about this type of relation-
ship.
“It was perfect. Six really terrific months.”
Bugger.
“He was a student here at the U of S. We met at
a campus GLBT club meeting.” He sniggered at
the thought. “They host these really lame wine
and cheese nights; usually a couple warm bottles
of Lonesome Charlie—appropriate don’t you
think—and a block of dried-out cheddar.
Normally about four people show up, and two of
those are the organizers. It’s not really my thing,
but I’d been single for a while and didn’t know
how to meet people. So I decided to go one night
and, as luck would have it, so did James. Besides
James and myself, there was this really bitter les-
bian and a straight, Chinese girl who could barely
speak English and thought she was at a chess club
meeting. Well, let me tell ya, we got out of there
pretty quick, giggling like girls and with a bottle
of Lonesome Charlie under James’ jacket.”
Aha! He was a thief!
I was grasping.
I let Marc continue. I suspected I wasn’t going
to get any useful information from his story but he
seemed to be deriving such pleasure from telling
it. “We sat in my car and talked until the wine was
gone. He was such a cool guy and I was so sur-
prised that he seemed interested in me. I mean,
Anthony Bidulka — 147
I’m not exactly Lorenzo Lamas and I’m a fair bit
older than James is. But he insisted he was into me
and couldn’t we have some fun? He was still liv-
ing with his folks, so we went back to my place
and did just that. We had lots of fun. And I don’t
just mean the sex. He was such a fun-loving, nice
young guy. A real sweetheart. Six months later,
when the term ended, I was going abroad to start
a sabbatical and he was, I don’t know, working in
Saskatoon at a bicycle shop or something…so we
just parted ways, very amicably.”
I smiled and nodded. He had such an affable,