Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler [88]
“Arnie, I don’t doubt your abilities. But do you go salmon fishing on the Restigouche with Mackenzie of the Bank of Montreal?”
“I could never put a worm on a hook, it disgusts me.”
“Do you know how much I’ve got at risk in development deals? I could go under just like that. Arnie, I’ve got to hold onto him for another year. Max.”
“I shout at my kids. The phone rings, I jump like somebody was shooting a gun at me. I wake up at three o’clock in the morning from imaginary quarrels with that Jew-baiter. I’m so restless in bed poor Abigail can’t get any sleep, so one night a week she has to catch up. Wednesdays she cooks up a storm and takes it with her to a girlfriend’s house in Ville St. Laurent. She spends the night with Rifka Ornstein. I don’t blame her. She comes home refreshed.”
“How much do I pay you, Arnie?”
“Twenty-five thousand.”
“Starting next week I’m going to make it thirty.”
When Abigail arrived promptly at eight Wednesday night, I delivered my rehearsed speech. “Of course it was never like this for me before, but we must sacrifice ourselves for the sake of Arnie and the children. I couldn’t live with myself knowing that I had hurt them and neither could a woman of your rare beauty and intelligence and integrity. We will always have our memories. You know, like Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard in Brief Encounter.”
“I never go to British movies. It’s their funny accents. Who can understand how they speak English?”
“Nobody can take away the magic we shared, but we must be brave.”
“You know something? If my hands were free, I’d clap. But I made you braised brisket and kasha. Here,” she said, shoving it at me. “Choke on it.”
Once she had gone, slamming the door, I heated up the brisket, which was wonderfully moist if a tad too salty. But the kasha was perfect. What, I wondered, if we cut out the fucking and she continued to cook for me? Naw. She wouldn’t buy that.
Later that guilt-ridden night, pulling on a Montecristo, I surprised myself, resolving to finally do right by Arnie, and put an end to his office miseries. I woke up the next morning bent on self-sacrifice, a determined man glowing with virtue. Slipping into a soft-shoe shuffle, I belted out, “Itsy-Bitsy, Teenie-Weenie, Yellow Polkadot Bikini.”36 Then, immediately following a long liquid lunch at Dink’s, which served to bolster my resolve, I summoned Arnie to my office.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, his lower lip trembling.
“Sit down, Arnie, old pal of mine,” I said, beaming beneficently. “I’ve got news for you.”
Arnie lowered himself on to the edge of a chair. Rigid. Sweaty. Treating me to a whiff of the stench of fear. “I’ve thought over our problems here,” I said, “and I’ve come to the only possible conclusion. Fasten your seat belt, Arnie, I’m firing Hugh.”
“Like hell you are,” he hollered, shooting out of his chair, spittle beginning to fly. “I quit.”
“Arnie, you don’t understand. I’m —”
“Oh yeah? Well wipe that smirk off your face. You’ve made your choice, and me, I’ve got my pride, I’ve made mine.”
“Arnie, listen to me, please.”
“Don’t think for a minute I don’t know what’s behind all this. Judas. You propositioned my wife. You tried to make it with the mother of my children. She didn’t stay the night with Rifka yesterday, but came home before midnight and confessed it to me. You caught her by surprise in my kitchen, at Craig’s bar mitzvah party, for Christ’s sake, and rubbed against her, you bastard. She wouldn’t have you and now I’m paying the price. You’re laughing. You find that funny?