(with apologies to Fyodor)
I watched him walk through the lobby entrance and take a seat at the top of the horseshoe, and as he sat down, he asked if I knew how to make a Corpse Reviver. I asked him number one or number two, and he said “you passed, barman” and after the briefest of pauses he said “number two, if you please” and I got to work.
He was clearly of the retired political type: well dressed, in the kind of suit that isn’t quite tailored, but it’s at least been fitted properly. Someone who had to look good on television, not just a backbencher type glad-handing the farmers on weekends. I vaguely recognized him but not enough to remember what for; it nagged at me.
“Are you staying here?” I asked, and he said yes, and I said perhaps he’d be more comfortable down the bar, towards the side. He smiled and asked if he was sitting in too prime a real estate, and I smiled back and said, well, I need to make sure the clientele is happy. He nodded, got up, moved to the end of the bar, and gave an exaggerated wave.
Okay, I thought. I passed, and so did he. Check.
I brought his drink – it was also a pleasure to mix a proper cocktail – and he asked for some bar snacks and said he was staying at the hotel, and would like to run a tab. I asked him which room; he mentioned a room on the sixth floor, one of the smaller suites. I asked if he had stayed here before and he said no, but he had been in the lounge many times, and as we were talking one of the waitresses came by and greeted him by his first name.
“Ponty,” she said, “I haven’t seen you in at least a year” – and she kissed him warmly on his cheek. He said her name and smiled again, standing up and taking her hand. She waited, and he said “you probably saw the story about the, ah, incident, in Hardisty”. She frowned, blushed, and looked at her hand in his. Yes, she said, but I had hoped they would realise you could never have done anything, that there wasn’t anything you could have done.
“They did, but, well, then again, they didn’t,” he said, sitting back down and letting go, “but thanks,” and since his drink was now in front of him, he stirred the cherry and took a quick sip. “Really, thanks, and thanks for saying hi. It’s nice to be back in the capital. And to see you.” He took her hand again and kissed it and let it go, and she looked back into his eyes and smiled, and as she went back to the lounge, told me he shouldn’t pay for his drinks tonight.
He looked back at me, and finally recognizing him – from interviews, from the papers, from a decade of seeing him over in the corner table, sometimes with another minister, sometimes with a party fundraiser or a journalist, or his wife, or more likely mistress, or daughter, who can tell these days – I accidentally gave him a raised eyebrow. Not obvious but enough so that he noticed. And to his credit, he said “yes, that’s me, and yes, this is the first time at the bar.”
“Apparently your money is no good here, sir…”
“That was very nice of her. But please, open the tab. This one -” he pointed at his glass “won’t be my last, and I don’t want to be a burden on the establishment.”
It was a Thursday, around six o’clock. The lounge was packed but the bar was only maybe half full, and mostly on the other side which faces towards the lounge. After maybe twenty minutes, an elegantly dressed man walked up to the bar – to the same spot at the top of the horseshoe that Ponty had christened earlier – and looked around. He found my eye and said without hesitation and with a commanding but somewhat precious English accent:
“Barman, I’d like a rusty nail. And don’t give me the old line about a hammer chaser, just get me the drink.”
He scanned the room while I poured, and finding Ponty, walked down to him, and moved the next chair away with a swift scrape so he could stand up against the bar. He was tall and thin, and by not sitting he gave himself a good head and a half of vertical dominance – both the same age, although each held their age quite differently. He rapped his fingers on the bar top and, spinning his head around and whipping his finger to signal me to set his drink down in front of him, shuffled a bit on his feet.
They didn’t exchange any pleasantries. Coming over, placing the glass in front of him, I asked without looking at either of them, “do you know this gentleman?”
Ponty looked at me – the other one ignored the question – and said yes, stiffening just a bit, and told me to put the drink on his tab. I looked at the other man in the eyes and said, “This is the only drink on the tab, sir, as my friend here has been taken care of.”
His eyes stared back. They were not blank, nor were they black, nor were they threatening. They were empty, and told me I didn’t matter. “Thank you, Ponty,” he said. “Do you know this man?”
“No,” replied Ponty, wrily, stirring the cherry in his coupe before taking another sip. “Well, not any more than as a barman.”
“Well. As a such, he can be witness. Let’s not wait any longer. I am impatient, and apologies for being late: but then again, you are overdue.”
“Well counselor, I haven’t been avoiding you. It’s been what, eighteen months now since the inquiry was closed.”
“Yes Ponty, about that, actually now closer to two years but aligning calendars isn’t why we’re both here. The party is deeply appreciative of the fact that you chose not to run for reelection, indeed that you chose to almost disappear entirely after the inquiry was terminated. And while the province is a small place, even here memories fade.”
“But you’re here, and I’ve been summoned.” He took another sip from his cocktail.
“Yes. Yes you have, although let’s face it, being summoned to the quiet corner of the Confederation Bar is not the worst way to handle these things, is it? Yes, there might be press here somewhere,” and with that he made another quick scan of the room, “but they seem to be busy trying to get laid at six thirty in the evening, not in sussing out what a washed out politico is doing with…”
“… with the political equivalent of Columbo? Or maybe just calling you Beria would be more appropriate, given that we are the red party. Or perhaps the Grand Inquisitor? Didn’t you study Russian literature back in Toronto, Daniel?”
He took a long drink – well, long enough; I have to admit I made it pretty light, too much ice in too short a glass, and he took a moment to glare at me. “Touché, Ponty. But you’re being evasive. This is private, this is just between you and me – and, of course, our betters down the street. Who are, as you know, footing the bill for your couple days of relaxation at this esteemed hotel, as well as our bar tab for this evening’s, er, conversation.”
At that, Ponty drank the rest of his cocktail in one swoop, holding it in his mouth for a moment before swallowing. He grabbed some of the snack mix with his left hand and poured half a handful into his mouth and chewed, swallowed, and looked over in my direction.
“I think my corpse has been revived, friend. I’ll take a double gin with bitters, with a couple ice cubes. And another when it looks light, thanks.”
“Of course sir. Any preference?”
“Angostura bitters. And the gin should be good. Make me happy.”
I moved off to grab a bottle.
“Glad to hear you’re feeling up to it, Ponty. So to be clear, no one thinks badly of you – well almost no one, but those who don’t like you now also didn’t like you before Hardisty, so they aren’t important.”
He paused to finish off the last of his drink.
“I’m going to play my cards up front here: the press has forgotten about it, and even the supposedly loyal opposition has mellowed entirely on the subject. All the great and the good agree that posting you to the pension board is an appropriate gesture. As long as you stick to a career in post-electoral honours, everyone is going to be thrilled. You’re intelligent, you did everything right after it happened, you preserved the dignity of all involved – but we’re all just interested in closing this out. We want to know why.”
I’d finished mixing the beverage – not that it took too long – and placed it in front of Ponty. He lifted his eyes and smiled at me, then looked back down.
“That’s all. You see, it’s not that we think there is anything we have to worry about. Because we don’t. We’re good at this game, Ponty – you know that – you’ve been in this crowd since law school, and while we’re not omniscient we’re close enough to it in this province to be fairly sure of our actions. But every now and again something comes up which is … curious. And when I say that, I mean it’s curious with respect to the party, to how we make policies, to how we stay in power, or at least try to. And your behaviour was, well, curious. It’s been eighteen months or two years or whatever and we remain none the wiser, although again, everyone is quite pleased at how you’ve handled things from your end, how you kept us informed as to media inquiries and whatnot – but we keep asking, why did you do it?”
Now it was his turn to ask for another drink. “Another one, barman, and this time make sure it sticks.”
Ponty looked at me, “Remember it’s on my tab, friend – even though apparently we’re all friends here. More snacks as well please – when you get a chance.”
Silence.
“I’m waiting, Ponty.”
He took a long drink from the gin, clear but feathery from the bitters. He looked at the glass after he swallowed and tilted it in my direction with a smile, and then he placed it with precision on the coaster. He adjusted it slightly, perfecting its placement against the tiling of the bar top. And then he spoke.
“Counselor, I know why you and the party brought me here – and by here, I mean right here, at this bar. That kid was a mystery to everyone. Good kid, mind you, so far as I could tell at the hearing. But I’m not sure what I can tell you that would make any sense. I was just down there to observe the selection hearing.”
“We know that, Ponty, we all know that – no way you could have planned to be there on that day. Sheer coincidence we set you up for the photo op, to ‘observe the actions of our local men and women on the ground in the active service of parliamentary democracy’ and all that rubbish. But you had to have realized that your presence meant that everything you said would make a difference.”
I placed a slightly better made drink in front of him. He looked down, looked skeptically, took a short sip, and then dropped the annoyance and looked back at his sparring partner.
“And what you said – “
“Listen Daniel, why did they even bother to ask my opinion? I was literally just there for the photo op. What the hell was I supposed to know about alternate candidates in a riding known mostly for its eccentric mediocrity? Yes, I came from out there – but that was forty years ago, and since then I’ve bounced between Ottawa, Assembly chambers, and board rooms in Calgary. I had nothing worth saying to those people except the thirty seconds of toss off remarks I gave when I entered the room. Ask the people in the room for Christ’s sake – why did they even want my opinion when they already knew what they wanted?”
“We did ask them, Ponty, although they were also puzzled by your performance. You’re right, they had already made up their minds, but they answered like the rancher hicks they are. ‘Well, we figured the minister would have something good to say’, ‘he always talks so nice when the CBC guy asks him a question’, ‘sure, I’m the local magistrate, but he went to McGill, he’s been in six cabinets, he’s Order of Canada for shit’s sake’ – and Ponty, don’t give me the I’m-just-a-kid-from-Lloydminster bullshit, everyone knows you walk into a hearings chamber and the octave shifts. Or at least it used to. And you know it too. You may not have wanted to be there, but once you walked into the room, you were going to called upon for a verdict. Don’t try to deny it.”
A long drink for both of them. The noise in the lounge rose and fell. The refilled bar snack bowl was emptied in two desperate grabs, their hands touching, Daniel’s hand recoiling, letting Ponty get the bigger handful. He crunched on the peanuts and the spicy bits, and took a drink, not a sip, of the gin, and gave me a thankful look.
“That’s a backhanded compliment, counselor, but I won’t disagree with you.”
He shuffled the snacks in his hand like a pair of dice, and then ate the rest of them.
“Well then don’t hide behind the supposed impartial dignity of your former office. We’re interested in clearing this up – and you know it’s not official, so also don’t hide behind the risk to your reputation either. This is purely amongst ourselves. None of us have anything to gain by airing this out in public. We just want to know.”
He toyed with his drink, spinning it on the coaster, waiting for Ponty to respond.
“Well. Let’s remember that the kid in question – actually before we get into it could we just agree that he was a kid? I mean sure, he was probably thirty or maybe early thirties, but he looked like he was still staying in the dorms, not like the quote unquote well-regarded community organiser that I was told to expect. Would you, counselor, have taken him seriously? Of course not – look at you. Indeed, what would you have done – counselor?”
A sharp sigh and a long drink.
“Ponty, I probably would have dressed him down and simply walked out. The old man and I have talked about this. He would have done the same, or actually what he said was, that he would have told the little runt he was playing out of his league, told the locals to wash their own laundry, and then walked out. Neither he nor I would have sat around and asked questions. Nor would you have done so, ten years ago, back when you were the rising star. That’s the whole fucking point of this conversation.”
Another drink, the glass almost drained at this point.
“You used to be like us. You used to focus on the party, on the goal of staying in power, of reminding the locals that voting for us meant modest patronage, decent roads, and low engagement in whatever the hell they do in their lives. The bargain was simple: give us power and we’ll leave you alone, in fact we even leave the Premier alone when he gets shined up on Crown and Sevens and makes an ass of himself,” and he tapped his index finger on the bar, “just like all of you.”
He downed the glass, cleared his throat, and found my eyes so that he could make the circle gesture for another round, “a double this time.”
“And yet you, Ponty, asked this golden child questions. Pointed questions, over and over. You practically crucified him. In public.”
Ponty, who had been staring ahead at the bottles on the bar, looked down. He drank some more gin, not enough to justify another round just yet, but enough so that he was trying to gain a bit of courage.
And yet he stayed silent.
“I’m waiting, Ponty, and not just for my drink,” with a sharp glance over at me, and I replaced his empty glass for a full one and with my left hand refilled the snack bowl.
He finished the last of his gin – “okay, now it’s time for another” – and he placed his empty glass and the coaster and pushed it in my direction.
“Fine, Daniel. The kid meant well. When he stood up to the podium there at the Elks Club there wasn’t any trace of the cynicism which defines you, and which sticks in my gut like fundraising buffets. He was trying something thoughtful and caring, maybe nothing big, but something. No, it wasn’t in the direct interests of the party, but back in the seventies when you and I started, that’s what we pretended to do, to help the people out in the prairies and in the easy-to-hit, quick-to-dry-up oil fields. We gave them the free rein they wanted and we told them that Ottawa wasn’t what mattered, it was them, and we were fighting for them.
“No, actually no, it was us we were fighting for. Us, all of us. That’s what we said, anyway. But then again, you and I came from a different world – or actually, we were admitted into another world and admired ourselves for it. With our law degrees, our connections from drinking clubs and arguments over case law in Montreal and Toronto, we were part of something larger. All the more appropriate, don’t you think, that we’re having this conversation here, stared down upon by the men who made the country from their permanent perch above the fireplace?” and nodded behind him toward the painting above the fireplace in the lounge.
He took a sip. “I may have come from Lloydminster but I was no longer of it – and you, you’re just another dominion carpetbagger, so don’t start with me either. You went to McGill because you read out badly in London and took the colonial route. What’s the old filth phrase – failed in London, try Hong Kong? You went for U of T instead – bravo. But that’s you. In any event we made it. We both arrived back east, and we were proud of it. People would return our calls – maybe not instantly, but they would return them – and we could head west without the gnawing fear that out here was all we had. I told myself that I could always go back if I needed to – hell, we’ve both kept our club dues current – but I also knew that that gave us the confidence and the capital to never need to go back.
“The kid wasn’t like that. I mean, sure, he was top of his class in high school and in university in Calgary, and he had built quite a following out there in the rural ridings, but he had no safety net. He came from nothing. Kid like that trying to make it in Toronto? My parents sent me east with a bankroll; you had the family name and the accent. Did he even own a suit? Forget it. But there he was, two hundred clicks out of the city, trying to build something that he actually believed in, and telling the party that he thought it made sense for us too. And if he failed, let’s face it, there was nothing to fall back on. Not for him.”
I looked Ponty in the eyes as I put a fresh gin in front of him and then, not losing his stare, set the double in front of the other.
“I know, Ponty, but we see kids all the time who think they can change the system. They mean well, don’t get me wrong. But the party exists to channel that. All you do is keep quiet as they rant in some grange hall or local, and after they run out of steam, you give them my card – my card, that’s what I’m here for – and I put them in an office in Red Deer managing land acquisitions for the Transport Ministry. Or if they’re really bright, I do some digging and see if the local MLA is cheating on his wife or, God forbid, he’s gay, and we figure out whether he – or she, we’re open these days, even in our party – might be the right next candidate. And ‘the kid’, as you insist, was one of those good ones. You just had to listen and figure it out. You had my card in your pocket, because you always had a stack at the ready. You knew the game. So I’m still waiting. What was different out there, what made Hardisty different on a random Friday afternoon in April?”
Ponty drank first, a slow but not long draught.
“No, it was never about the kid.” He took another sip. “No wait – that’s not true. I’ll admit, I was sick of shunting boys like him off into your faceless masses of party hacks. I still am. It’s why I told the premier that putting me out to pasture on the pension board was perfect – I can cut them a monthly check after they hit sixty five, and I don’t need to see them during the long slow decline they go through to get to that point. I’m happy to be shunted myself, because you’re right, I know the game. I was just sick of teaching it.”
Another drink.
“Really? Well, okay, Ponty, I can understand burn out – most of us feel it eventually, and hopefully when we do we’re old enough and have enough under the mattress to go away gracefully. But that’s not what you did.”
Now it was the counselor’s turn to drink – slow but long. It was an honest double – I didn’t like him but I had poured properly as a favour, who despite the conversation was staying upright, not slouching, not avoiding it. The glass returned to the bar top half empty.
“No, you questioned him.” Fingers rapped the bar. “And you questioned him as if you thought he had a chance to actually change things.”
“Yes. Well, I think there is a chance to change things. Which is why you and I are different, Daniel. I know I’ve lost the way, and that I’m not going to be the guy who will make a difference. But I also don’t feel like it’s impossible. What I wanted to do back there, back before the last election, when the party was stuck in the woods, was to ask a kid whether he really knew what he was getting into, whether he really understood the full commitment required to change a town, or a province, or a country, or a society. Yeah, they were pretty pointed questions, but I’d been thinking about them for awhile – not for him specifically, obviously, I mean, I couldn’t have predicted that that particular individual was the one I’d encounter on that particular day – but I’d been mulling them over about myself, about the guy who had his law degree in hand at age 26 and came back to the prairies, with a desire to do good but mostly – let’s face it – a desire to do well. What am I going to ask myself when the movie of my life starts unfolding against my eyelids when I die, Daniel, that’s what I was thinking about.”
“Jesus, Ponty, are you sick? Is there something wrong?”
“Sick? What?” He stared back at the taller man, who blinked, his eyes probing, genuinely concerned. “Oh God, you mean like do I have cancer or something? No. No, no – Daniel no, I’m fine, and thanks for asking, but no. I know I haven’t been good on returning calls lately but, no… It’s just… well…” and he took a drink, “it’s just that after what happened, something did break.” He paused, and Daniel looked at him. “After she found the body, and told me what he had done to himself and why, I couldn’t just go back.”
The attorney stopped and looked down. He grabbed the seat that he had earlier pushed away, and sat. His shoulders stayed rigid but his head drooped a bit. The windows were dark and the wind whipped from across the river valley, tinkling the window panes on the French doors.
I caught myself not breathing, and dropped my arms with a jerk, clinking some glasses on the bar, and both men started, looking at me.
“I’m sorry gentleman, my apologies.”
“No no,” said Ponty, smiling weakly at me. “It’s fine, and I guess you’re as much a part of this conversation as we are. As my former colleague pointed out before, it’s a small province. You and everyone else heard about it. How he kept asking his friends why I broke him before he went out to the field, and, well, the…”
He paused.
“So Daniel, it was, I suppose, really, about the kid. Or it was about how I couldn’t really look him in the eye without looking at myself, thirty five years ago, knowing that I wanted to do well, but that one, he actually wanted to do good, and he was both savvy enough and innocent enough to think the party was the best way to do it. As if the party was anything more than a vehicle for power – he thought, honestly, that it could be a tool for good. Correction: he thought is was supposed to be a tool for good. And every time he deflected my questions, it made me realise how I had failed for thirty five goddamn years. And I kept asking. And eventually I gave him up, and the locals didn’t have to be told.”
He finished his gin and circled the glass.
“Just a little more and then I think we’re done, aren’t we?”
Daniel said nothing. Ponty gave a short, quiet, bitter laugh, and continued.
“Three rusty nails is a lot, isn’t it Daniel? Well, let me finish then, and I’ll take my glass up to my room. You and I both know how to destroy a man’s career if need be, but sometimes you hope that someone doesn’t start a career so as to require destroying later on. That, really, is why I spoke up. That’s why I kept it up. And that’s why, when he refused to play the game, I left him hanging and fed him to the local board. I knew they’d kick him off the ticket – even though he was a hell of a lot better than anyone else on offer. I knew that after what I’d done he’d be out of politics for good, but I’d hoped that the kid would go back to woodworking, or driving a truck in the oil fields, or maybe that girlfriend of his who kept staring at him the whole time would convince him to start a family and be a normal human being. Do good, I thought, but don’t try to pretend. Don’t end up like me.”
“About the girlfriend, Ponty.”
“Yeah. How is…”
“She’s still raving about it on the internet. Most people think she’s just another conspiracy theory lunatic. But we keep an eye on her, which isn’t pretty for those of us who remember what happened.”
Despite both glasses being little more than melted ice, first one drank and put his glass on the bar, then the other did the same, with the same silence, with the same slow movement of the wrist. Ponty made slow circles on the rim of his glass. The attorney stared ahead, his eyes clouding.
“That angle was the toughest for us to deal with, actually. Of course it all goes away with time – the world moves on – but the Premier has a daughter the same age, and that’s probably why he’s been picking at this scab for so long, why we’re both here, why we want to put this to bed once and for all.”
“And he sent you because – well, because she had been your secretary. More than that. I get it Daniel.”
He paused again, long and relaxed. “It wasn’t my fault. But I understand. I haven’t given you the answer but I probably can’t; at least, I can’t give you what you want. But I understand.”
Neither spoke for awhile and then Ponty looked at me and raised his finger. I turned my back on them and pushed the buttons on the screen, the beeps of the register seeming completely wrong, the churning of the printer seeming completely wrong, the leatherette bill fold and the hotel branded pen inside seeming completely wrong.
I placed it in front of Ponty, but the lawyer scooped it up. He then opened it, signed his name and the room number, glanced at his companion, who nodded, and wrote a two hundred dollar tip on the line, and closed the bill fold again.
Ponty stood up, dusted himself off, and spoke. “Are we done here, Daniel? I was tired of just buying into things and getting others to sell out. It had been building for awhile. It snapped in me and it happened. I just couldn’t have realized that it snapped at the worst possible time for that kid, for her, for you, for the world. But just grant me my ride into the sunset. Or rather, let me stay here in the capital and pay people’s pensions. I don’t want to go back.”
Daniel closed his eyes, then wiped away some moisture, and sat for a moment before finally stiffening up and stepping off his chair. He smiled, the first genuinely positive emotion of the night from him, and patted the smaller gentleman on the back. “Of course, Ponty. That was never in question,” he said. “No one ever thought we could go back. It was always about the why.”
A short pause; he straightened himself, and with a sharp intake of breath, continued. “We’ll need you back here in a week or so for the formalities. We’ll want a new head shot, and the Premier has asked for a handshake photo when we announce the appointment, so think about your suit. I’m sure the papers will make mention of what happened, but it will only be in passing. They never really cared about him – or about you, if I can be totally honest. I – excuse me, we – we were the ones who needed to know. And we are done here, Ponty. Get some room service. It’s paid for.”
While they had been closing their books, I had quietly refilled their glasses. Ponty grabbed his, nodded to me with almost a grin, a sort of relief that he had a full drink for the quiet ride upstairs, and walked off towards the lobby elevators.
The attorney held back, watching Ponty walk off, watching him disappear into the lift, and then downed his in three hard swallows. He took a napkin from the bar kit and wiped his mouth, and after a long pause, stepped back slightly from the bar. I had been staring at him, and he knew it, but he only then stared back at me, with the dead eyes with which he had first looked at me.
“I suppose that last nail was meant for my coffin. Clever of you.”
He cleared his throat and turned towards the room halfway, scanning the crowd which was now slowly turning over to the later evening drinkers. Without looking back at me he spoke.
“This conversation never happened.”
“Of course not sir.”
“You miss what I’m saying. I know the Premier and I have no doubt he knows you – he spends far too much of his free time here, as does much of the cabinet. Ponty’s room is under my name, and no one knows he’s in town. This conversation was purely for my benefit, and the party of course would find it unseemly if they knew I had had it. “
I nodded, but arched my eyebrow.
“You’ve been here long enough to know what my job requires. It’s not an easy life, barman. But I needed to see where it will end. And with that now in hand,” and he tipped his head towards me, “I bid you, sir, a good evening.”