Alligator - Lisa Moore [63]
I made a promise to Luna, Julia Butterfly Hill had said. Luna was what she called the tree.
Wild-eyed, the New York Times had said. How strong and uncompromising she was. Imagine the shudder running through her tree when they put the chainsaw to the trunk.
Okay then, Ms. Drake said, seeming to have finished with her joints. She was shaking her head in disbelief at whatever it was Colleen’s file had revealed and when she looked up there was not a whit of intelligence anywhere in her expression. Was she hungover or premenstrual? She seemed absorbed in some way that did not bode well for Colleen. There was a crackle of cartilage under the table and Colleen realized Ms. Drake had slipped off her sandals and must have been rotating her ankles.
Mr. Duffy, you may want to write a victim impact statement, Ms. Drake said. What that would be is a chance for you to put in writing how you feel about the damage Miss Clark did to your bulldozers.
I’ll tell you how I feel, said Mr. Duffy. I feel put out.That’s the best way to describe it. Do you know that feeling, Miss Clark? Write that down, Ms. Drake. Put out. I suspect Miss Clark hasn’t ever felt put out. I would guess that, for the most part, things have pretty much gone your way, Miss Clark.
Here Mr. Duffy shifted in his chair to direct his comments to Ms. Drake, who had opened a pad to take notes but whose hand hovered over the paper, the pen wagging back and forth.
Colleen Clark will pay for putting me out, Ms. Drake. She will pay because I intend to invest heavily in her unhappiness. For example, I mean to make certain that if she ever expects to enter any professional trade, such as the law or medicine, she will find this act of vandalism following at her heels. There will be a panel of ageing academics reviewing her applications to those fields and grimly shaking their heads. Miss Clark is under the impression that the law is protecting her because she’s a minor.
Now, Mr. Duffy, we are here to negotiate some conflict resolution, interrupted Ms. Drake. That’s our goal.
Pardon me, Ms. Drake. My goal is to let Miss Clark know there are perfectly acceptable, legal ways around the law, which I intend to employ to make her life miserable. Should Miss Clark apply, for example, to be a teller at a supermarket or to work in some crappy little corner store she may find she does not get an interview.
Miss Clark should know that I have set traps for the fifty pine martens on my property and I intend to barbecue them and feed them to my dogs. If Miss Clark would like, I can send her the paws of each pine marten so she can keep up with my progress. I’m going to be personally responsible for the extinction of the Newfoundland pine marten. Consider it a pledge.
MR. DUFFY
DUFFY THOUGHT SUDDENLY of the girl’s mother, the flaky mother with her hand on his arm.
Mr. Duffy, my daughter is a stranger to me, she’d said. Beverly Clark’s eyes filled with tears. Her eyes were green and the watery film over them changed their colour; they became even more luminous, ultramarine. She was wearing mascara that made her lashes into sharp black spikes that seemed to hold her tears back. She caught her lower lip in her teeth and her eyes cleared and she laughed.
That’s just what I didn’t want to happen, she said. He knew he was being taken in.
She was not genuine; she was slippery and convincing. Her hand on his arm, as though she’d mistaken him for the sort of man one might sway or indulge.
Yet it was pleasurable to have her smile at him while overcome with emotion. She was offering a weird intimacy, an unengaged, effortless form of flirting. He was astounded by it and miffed. He found, to his shame, he was flattered.
Mrs. Clark, you’ve raised a misguided little torment, he said. He had meant to sound gruff. But it came out all wrong; it sounded courtly, like a compliment.
Duffy had a girlfriend, a young hairdresser who worked in Churchill Square. He’d had a plan for that evening: the Bulgarian restaurant. He liked to be lavish with the hairdresser. She was a good cook, and when he visited