Barney's Version (Movie Tie-In Edition)

  So the three of us went to lunch at Le Mas.

  “What about Peter?” I asked.

  “He seems to be one of the lucky ones. I think he’s immune. Barney, there’s an insurance broker in New York who buys life policies from guys like me. I make him beneficiary and he advances me seventy-five per cent of the capital due on my death. What do you think?”

  “You don’t need to traffic with such bloodsuckers. Tell me how much you want and I’ll lend it to you. Isn’t that what you were just about to suggest, Chantal?”

  “Yes.”

  After Serge left, Chantal lingered behind, and we continued to drink.

  “You know something, Barney? You’re not such a bad guy.”

  “Oh yes I am. You don’t know the half of it. My sins are legion. So I’ve got to put some points on the board while there’s still time.”

  “Have it your way.”

  “Christ, I’ll soon know more dead people than live ones. Why don’t you marry Saul?”

  “For sure, when it comes to knowing what’s best for me, it’s a toss-up. You or my mother.”

  “I don’t like to see you quarrelling with Solange.”

  “Why don’t you marry her, Barney?”

  “Because Miriam will come home one of these days. I’m willing to bet on it. Hey, for a guy named after a character in a comic strip I haven’t done too badly, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Barney, there’s something I’ve always wanted to ask you.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Did you really murder that guy all those years ago?”

  “I think not, but some days I’m not so sure. No, I didn’t. I couldn’t have.”

  12

  Bad days my memory functions no better than an out-of-focus kaleidoscope, but other days my recall is painfully perfect. Today I seem to be pumping on all cylinders, so I’d better get down on paper what I’ve been avoiding until now before I expunge it again. I didn’t lie about those last two days87 with Boogie, but neither did I tell everything. The truth is, the Boogieman who came to me to kick his habit was no longer the friend I revered. Over the wasting years all those drugs he ingested, not to mention time and fevers, had scrambled his head, burning away his individual beauty.88 He was, for instance, no longer generous about other writers, except for McIver — “He showed some promise” — but that was proffered only to needle me. Something else. On one of my forays into his favoured New York watering-holes, following his disappearance, I discovered that he had latterly come to be regarded as a man who promised better than he paid.

  When we pulled up in front of my house in Hampstead, so that he could shoot up one more time, he said, “You must be rich now.”

  “Boogie, don’t make me laugh. I’m heavily in debt. I never should have gone into TV production. If not for the commercials and crapola industrial documentaries I’m obliged to do, I’d be dead in the water.”

  Boogie was amused by our split-level home and The Second Mrs. Panofsky’s flair with its furnishing. The enormous mirror shot through with gold flake. The collection of porcelain cats perched on the mantelpiece. The sterling silver tea set and cut-crystal whisky decanter on the sideboard. “There’s something missing,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Cellophane covers for the lamp shades.”

  Surprising myself, I rose to the defence of The Second Mrs. Panofsky. “I happen to like what she’s done here,” I lied.

  Boogie sauntered over to a bookcase, plucked out my copy of Clara’s The Virago’s Verse Book and, with his expert eye, immediately found two lines that didn’t scan, and read them aloud with unseemly pleasure. “A woman from bloody Life magazine came to interview me. ‘What was Clara like in those days when she was in her creative mode?’ she asked. Crazy, I said. A compulsive shoplifter. Everybody’s screw. ‘What is your favourite or most germane Clara Charnofsky anecdote?’ Oh, go away. Fiche le camp. Va te faire cuire un oeuf. ‘When did you decide to make communications your field of endeavour?’ Well, I’ll be damned. ‘Do you resent not being world-renowned like Clara?’ Go away. ‘With all due respect, I think you suffer from low self-esteem.’ Shit. I still can’t understand why you married Clara.”

  “How come you never married?”

  “Didn’t I?”

  “You did?”

  “Take off your tie and knot it round my arm.”

  It took three bloody probes before he was finally able to drive the syringe into the vein, and then he dozed on the ride out to the lake, moaning, muttering incomprehensible complaints against what I imagined to be intolerable dreams. He slid into sleep again at our dining-room table and I put him to bed. I drove to Montreal the next morning, had far too much to drink, and when I returned to the cottage earlier than expected a day later I found the Boogieman in bed with The Second Mrs. Panofsky.

  “It’s your fault,” said a giggly Boogie. “You were supposed to phone before you left town.”

  My hysterical wife, seated at the wheel of her Buick, hollered, “Some friend. What are you going to do about him?”

  “Oh, I’m going to kill him is what I’m going to do, and then maybe I’ll come after you and your mother.”

  “Fuck you,” she shrieked and, hitting the accelerator, she raced down the driveway, her rear tires spitting pebbles. Boogie and I got into the Macallan.

  “I ought to knock your teeth out,” I said, but my manner was playful.

  “Only after I’ve had a swim. Oh, she asked a lot of questions about Clara. You know, on reflection, I think I was no more than a convenient deus ex machina. She wanted to get even with you for that woman you’re keeping in Toronto.”

  “One minute,” I said. I hurried into my bedroom and returned with my father’s old service revolver, which I set down on the table between us. “Scared?” I asked.

  “Couldn’t that wait until I’ve done some snorkelling?”

  “You could do me a service, Boogie.”

  “Like what?”

  “I want you to agree to be a co-respondent in my divorce. All you have to do is testify that I came home to my beloved wife and found you in bed with her.”

  “Why, you planned this, you bastard.”

  “No, I didn’t. Honestly.”

  “You set me up.”

  “I didn’t. But possibly it’s time you came through for me once.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I can’t remember how many times I bailed you out with cheques over the years.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. Oh.”

  “Payment in advance, was it?”

  “Shit.”

  “What if I took money from you because that’s all you’ve got to give?”

  That crackled in the air between us for a bit before I answered in a voice not my own, “I had to borrow on your behalf, Boogie.”

  “This is getting to be very interesting.”

  “In vino veritas.”

  “Don’t tell me they taught you Latin in that high school of yours.”

  “Boy, was that ever a cheap shot.”

  “No. You’re the el cheapo here. You’re the old friend who has been keeping accounts, not me.”

  “Have it your way. But now that we’re into it, do you mind telling me whatever happened to that novel of yours the world was waiting for?”

  “Are you inquiring as a friend or an investor?”

  “Both.”

  “I’m still working on it.”

  “Boogie, you’re a fraud.”

  “I’ve let you down.”

  “You were once a writer, and a damn good one, but now you’re just another druggie with pretensions.”

  “I’ve failed in my duty to you. I was supposed to amaze the world so that one day you could brag, ‘If not for my help …’ ”

  “You’re pathetic.”

  “Oh, no. I’ll tell you what’s pathetic. Pathetic is a man so empty that he needs somebody else’s achievements to justify his own life.”

>   I was still struggling to recover from that hit when he smiled and said, “And now if you don’t mind, I’m going for a swim.”

  “I want to know why you can no longer pick up anybody else’s novel without sneering at it.”

  “Because what’s being published and praised today is second-rate. And I’ve still got standards, unlike —”

  “Here, you want to read a real writer,” I said, and I threw my copy of Henderson the Rain King at him.

  “Leo Bishinsky used to say, ‘How can you tolerate that know-nothing kid from Montreal?’ ”

  “And you no doubt pointed out that we were friends.”

  “I took you in hand and educated you, for Christ’s sake. I put the right books in your hands. And look what you’ve become. A TV hustler. Married to a rich man’s vulgar daughter.”

  “Not so vulgar that you didn’t bang her last night.”

  “Yeah, but she’s not the only wife of yours I had in bed. Clara, I said, what do you see in him? A breadwinner, she said. But I’ll give her this much. She made a great career move dying so early.”

  “Boogie, maybe I ought to punch you out after all. That was fucking nasty.”

  “But true,” he said.

  I couldn’t handle any more. I was too frightened. So, natural coward that I am, I retreated into humour. I scooped up the gun and aimed it at him. “Will you testify?” I demanded.

  “I’ll think it over on my swim,” he said, rising shakily to fetch my snorkelling equipment and flippers.

  “You’re too drunk to swim, you damn fool.”

  “You come too.”

  Instead, I fired that shot well over his head. But I only raised my gun hand at the last minute. So if I wasn’t guilty of murder in fact, I was by intent.

  13

  “What’s wrong?” asked Chantal.

  “I can’t remember where I parked my car, and don’t look at me like that. It could happen to anybody.”

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  It wasn’t on Mountain Street. Pardon me, rue de la Montagne. Or on Bishop.

  “Somebody has stolen it,” I said. “Probably one of your mother’s separatist buddies.”

  We tried de Maisonneuve, formerly Dorchester Boulevard.89 “What’s that?” she asked, pointing.

  “If you blab to Solange, you’re fired.”

  Saturday afternoon I was just drifting off to sleep when Solange phoned. “What time are you picking me up tonight?” she asked.

  “Am I? What for?”

  “The game.”

  “Ah, I think maybe I’ll give it a skip tonight.”

  “The hockey game?”

  “You know something? I’ve had enough of hockey. Besides, I’m very tired.”

  “It could be the last time we’ll ever see Gretzky play.”

  “Big deal.”

  “I don’t believe this.”

  “You want the tickets? Take Chantal.”

  Ten days later, according to Chantal, I dictated the same letter to her for the third time in a week. Leaving the office, I’m told I automatically reached into my pocket and pulled out a key, but didn’t know what it was for.

  “What are you staring at?” asked Chantal.

  “Nothing.”

  “Open your hand.”

  “No.”

  “Barney.”

  I opened it.

  “Now tell me what that is?”

  “I know damn well what it is. Why are you asking?”

  “Tell me.”

  “I think I’d better sit down.”

  Next thing I knew, strolling home from Dink’s late one afternoon, I opened the door to my apartment and found Solange and Morty Herscovitch lying in wait. Shit. Shit. Shit. “I know times are tough, Morty, but don’t tell me you bastards make house calls now.”

  “Solange thinks you may be suffering from fatigue.”

  “Who isn’t at our age?”

  “Or maybe it’s merely a brain tumour. We’re going to have to do a CAT scan and an MRI.”

  “Like fuck we are. And I’m not chewing any of your tranquillizers or antidepressants either. I remember when doctors were doctors and weren’t working on commission from drug companies.”

  “Why would I prescribe antidepressants?”

  “I’m now going to pour myself a drink. You can both join me before you leave.”

  “Are you depressed?”

  “Chantal took away my car keys and won’t give them back.”

  “I want you at my office at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  “Forget it.”

  “We’ll be there,” said Solange.

  Morty was not alone. There was another guy there. A fat guy, introduced as Dr. Jeffrey Singleton.

  “You a shrink?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Let me tell you something, then. I don’t hold with shamans, witch doctors, or psychiatrists. Shakespeare, Tolstoy, or even Dickens, understood more about the human condition than ever occurred to any of you. You overrated bunch of charlatans deal with the grammar of human problems, and the writers I’ve mentioned with the essence. I don’t care for the glib manner in which you stereotype people. Or how easily you can be paid to be a professional trial witness. One for the defence, the other for the prosecution — two so-called experts at odds, both pocketing big cheques. You play mind games with people, doing them more harm than good. And from what I’ve read recently, like my friend Morty here, you’ve given up the couch for chemicals. Swallow these twice a day for paranoia. Munch this before meals for schizophrenia. Well now, I take single malts and Montecristos for everything, and I recommend that you do the same. That will be two hundred dollars, please.”

  “I’d like you to do a little test.”

  “I pissed before I got here.”

  “It won’t take long. Think of it as a game.”

  “Don’t you dare patronize me.”

  “Barney, that’s enough.”

  “Will this take long?”

  “No.”

  “All right, then. Let’s go.”

  “What is the day of the week?”

  “I knew this would be ridiculous. Shit. Shit. Shit. It’s the day before Tuesday.”

  “Which is?”

  “You first.”

  But he wouldn’t bite.

  “Let me see. Saturday, Sunday … it’s Monday.”

  “And the date today?”

  “Look, you’re barking up the wrong tree. I could never remember my car licence number, or my social security number, and if I’m writing a cheque I always have to ask somebody the date.”

  “What month is it?”

  “April. Gotcha, didn’t I?”

  “The season?”

  “Boy, I’m going to be first in the class. If it’s April, it has to be summer.”

  Tears began to slide down Solange’s cheeks. “What’s wrong with you?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “What’s the year?”

  “In the calendar of my people or in the Christian area? I mean era.”

  “The Christian era.”

  “Nineteen ninety-six.”

  “Where are we?”

  “This is child’s play. We’re in Morty Herscovitch’s office.”

  “What floor are we on?”

  “My father was the detective in the family, not me. We got into an elevator. Solange pressed a button, and here we are. Next?”

  “What city are we in?”

  “Montreal.”

  “And the province?”

  “This is getting to be fun. We are in the blessed province that’s squeezed between Alberta90 and the other one, on the continent of North America, the World, the Universe, as I used to write on the brown paper cover of my grade four whatcha-ma-callit book.”

  “And the country we’re in?”

  “Canada, for the time being. Solange is an indépendentiste. Sorry, slip of the tongue. She’s for here. For Quebec going-it-alone. So we’ve got to be ca
reful what we say.”

  “I want you to repeat the following words for me. Lem——”

  “She’s a separatist, for Christ’s sake. Mornings are not my best time.”

  “Lemon, key, balloon.”

  “Lemon, key, balloon.”

  “Now I want you to begin with the number one hundred and count backwards by seven.”

  “Look, I’ve been very patient until now, but this is just too silly. I’m not going to do it. I could. But I’m not,” I said, lighting up a Monte-cristo. “Hey, I bit off the right end. Do I get any points for that?”

  “Would you be good enough to spell the word ‘world’ backwards for me?”

  “Did you read Dick Tracy when you were a kid?”

  “Yes.”

  “Remember, when he went undercover, he called himself ‘Reppoc.’ That’s ‘cop’ spelled backwards.”

  “How about ‘world’ backwards?”

  “D, r, l, and the rest of it. Okay?”

  “Do you remember the three words I asked you to repeat before?”

  “May I ask you a question?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wouldn’t you be nervous doing a test like this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Orange was one of them. The words. I’ll give you the other two if you can name the Seven Dwarfs.”

  “What is this I’m holding?”

  “It’s a fucken not-ink-point-pen, for sakes Christ, and you know what you strain spaghetti with? A colander. Ha.”

  “What’s this on my wrist?”

  “It’s what you use to tell the time with. A clock.”

  “Excuse me,” said Solange, fleeing into the waiting room.

  “Now I’d like you to take this paper in your right hand, fold it in half, and put it on the floor.”

  “No. I’ve had enough. Now you tell me something. How did I do in your childish little test?”

  “Your mother would be proud.”

  “So you’re not going to put me in a strait-jacket?”

  “No. But I want you to see a neurologist. There are some tests that should be run.”

  “Brain tests?”

  “We’ve got to eliminate certain possibilities. You could be suffering from no more than fatigue. Or benign forgetfulness, not uncommon in a man your age.”

  “Or a brain tumour?”

  “Let’s please not jump to unpleasant conclusions. Do you live alone, Mr. Panofsky?”