Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler [174]
I couldn’t sleep Wednesday night. In the morning, I cut myself shaving and spilled my coffee. Then I bought Miriam a long string of pearls at Birk’s and went to pick her up at Mirabel. We no sooner got through the front door when she said, “Something’s wrong.”
“Nothing.”
“Did anything happen to Saul while I was away?”
“He’s fine.”
“Kate?”
“Honestly.”
“You’re keeping something from me.”
“I am not,” I said, cracking open a bottle of Dom Perignon to welcome her home. It didn’t help.
“Is it the office? Have you had bad news?”
“There is absolutely nothing wrong, darling.”
Like hell there wasn’t. Miriam had been home for two days and we still hadn’t made love, which baffled her, but I knew about that bar in the Hôtel de la Montagne, and what if I had contracted herpes, a dose, or, God help us, that thing that queers and druggies get? You know, that disease that sounds like a fund-raiser. AIDS, that’s it.
I beat Miriam to the phone whenever it rang and lingered at home in the morning long enough to collect the mail, just in case. Returning from Dink’s in time for dinner, my stomach churning, I was ready with a lie in case that bitch had phoned in my absence.
Years ago, luxuriating in my undeserved happiness with Miriam and the kids, I feared for the anger of the gods. I was convinced something dreadful lay in wait for me. An avenging monster who would rise out of the bathroom drain like an invention of Stephen King’s. Now I knew. The monster was me. I was the destroyer of my loving refuge from “the world of telegrams and anger.”
In those days I was still obliged to simulate enthusiasm for the dreck that enriched me, suffering mediocre, functionally illiterate actors, hack writers, no-talent directors, and TV executives at lunches in New York or L.A. It was degrading. A sewer. But until I cheated, I was blessed with a sanctuary. Miriam. Our children. Our home. Where I was never required to be deceitful. But it was with apprehension that I now turned my key in the front-door lock, dreading discovery. So I took preventive measures at the office, calling in Gabe Orlansky and Serge Lacroix for a meeting. “Remember that girl who played the investigative reporter from the Globe in a recent McIver episode? I think her name was Lorraine Peabody, but I could be wrong.”
“Yeah. So?”
“I want her written into a couple more episodes.”
“She can’t act.”
“You can’t write and you can’t direct. Do as I say.”
Chantal lingered behind. “What is it?” I asked.
“Whoever would have thought —”
“Thought what?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s better.”
“I was mistaken about you. You’re no different than the others here. You don’t deserve a woman of Miriam’s quality. A dirty old man is what you are.”
“Get out.”
My heart hammering, I arranged to meet Lorraine for lunch at one of those quaintsy, tourist-trap restaurants in Old Montreal, where nobody knew me. “Look here,” I said, “what happened the other night was an aberration. You are not to write to me, phone, or ever attempt to contact me again.”
“Hey, it was no big deal. Relax. We shared a fuck, that’s all.”
“I assume our casting people have been in touch with you.”
“Yes, but if you think that’s why I —”
“Of course not. However, there is something you must do for me in return.”
“I thought I wasn’t supposed to contact —”
“As soon as we leave here, I’m driving you to Dr. Mortimer Herscovitch’s office, where you are going to have a blood test.”
“You’re kidding me, tiger.”
“You do as I say and there will be more work for you. If not, not.”
Guilt-ridden, I swung wildly between remorse and aggression. When bolstered by too much to drink, I concluded that I hadn’t behaved that badly and it was Miriam who was at fault. How dare she suspect I would be without blemish. Impervious to temptation. Guys weren’t like that. Guys tended to stray on occasion and I was a guy too. I deserved a medal, not obloquy,