Novellas #1: Influence

Helen Wisk then knew, did she not?, that there truly was a space between, a space between all the other spaces in the universe, because she stood there and looked down and didn’t realize what she was seeing.  Not at first.  And yet, she knew exactly what she was seeing, but she was in that “other space,” the space she had just discovered, the space between, so it was far off, way down below, and she couldn’t pronounce her own vision, couldn’t “articulate” what she was seeing, from there behind the glass, from behind the window, from three stories up.  But then there it was and she was back, as though she truly had been somewhere else.  Yes, and there he was.  She thought, I better call 911.  And then she did.  It started to rain then and she knew from television that they would have a harder time now, a harder time with the investigation, because the evidence, the evidence on the body, the evidence on Larry Wiseman’s body, would be washed away.  The space between, she then thought after she had made the call, it wasn’t anything like where she had once thought a person could travel as one might wish to do.  It wouldn’t be somewhere one had to end up either.  The space between was simply a space in one’s mind that was diffuse like a fog or mist, not a physical space at all, but a state of being in oneself, mostly where one was distracted, confused, or simply indifferent about everything that actually did exist, about whatever was in actual, physical space.  The space between wasn’t anywhere where Larry might have gone, might now be.  Although wherever he was, if he was anywhere at all, perhaps he would still occasionally find himself in the space between.  So Helen went back to work with what little she now knew, with the little she had just then discovered, with that not having made any difference to her (but still, she’d like to know more, would she not?), and when the police officers showed up to ask her questions about Larry, she would tell them that he seemed like someone so typical in this industry, only, sorry, but she didn’t know really what that was, only that it was what they all were, and no one who was actually a part of it had any idea of how to actually free themselves of it, although, it was true, none of them were honest enough with other people—although they could be honest with themselves, couldn’t they?–to ever admit that what they really wanted in life was to be free of what and where they now were.

Constable Tito Lorenzo liked murders.  Of course he didn’t like them for what they were, but he liked working them.  He liked the feeling ever since he had solved one, when was it, two, or was it three now, years ago?, but he’d solved it only because he had happened to remember something he had heard as a boy, about how people with red hair sometimes had to wear sunglasses—well, it didn’t matter now, but he had made fun of a boy, a boy with red hair, whose eyes, it turned out, were sensitive to sunlight.  That boy had had to wear sunglasses, and the reaction Tito had had when he encountered the man, the red-haired man, only for the second time, and quite at random, and who turned out to be Eva Simms’s murderer, Tito had smelled that familiar smell on him.  Suntan lotion.  It was the middle of March, a very sunny day to be sure, but the smell was so strong it almost caused Tito to wretch.  The man couldn’t handle being out in the sun without it, could he, not for a single minute?  And the killer, the killer had left something behind, sunglasses that no one could know for sure belonged to him, cracked and broken as they were, just lying there, just trash in the street.  They collected them anyway, bagged them and labelled them, tested them for DNA.  Lots of DNA on those.  Like Rogers Stadium.  Then, yes, there we are, they tested the killer and more of his DNA on those glasses than anyone else’s.  Can place you at the scene, then, can’t we?  Yes, we can.  Two, no, definitely now almost three years ago–and there had been murders since.  But it was only for the ones that seemed different from your typical crimes of passion, only for the unusual or macabre ones, that Tito would think, I’m actually enjoying the feel of this murder being worked–even as I do my daily duties as a constable.  Yes, I’m beginning to understand how a web from a crime is something almost metaphysical, how it is something that comes to be woven simply as one becomes aware of where one is, all because there are things that might mean in certain ways, and how the meanings start to combine and connect through each other to become real possibilities, what all this actually might lead to, once that final bell has tolled and a man is now condemned to hang in the balance, and one can even sometimes sense that man (or might it be a woman?—these days it was possible) falling and falling and falling, falling through the universe of meanings and connections, through theory and facts of evidence, until the connections form into the truth and then he lands, lands there on earth, lands for real, right in front of you, right where you stand, then and there, once and for all time.  Crash, thud!  Is that what Tito now feels, that swimmy feeling, almost like vertigo, but the opposite of vertigo because Tito actually likes it, because Tito is actually drawn in by it?  Being lighter than air, like falling upwards, as another mortal soul falls downward—but no, hey hadn’t promoted him, not then.  The feeling was back though, of another man falling, until Tito, Tito Lorenzo, would be there to catch him in his net.
It was one of those glassed-in deals, the company’s headquarters, in among the grassy knolls with the open vistas and the smooth asphalt that curved around corners gradually so one remembered Sundays country- or lake-side.  It was perfectly square or rectangular, glass within a metal frame, four levels, all reflective of course, so that the surroundings formed a natural, a pleasant, picture on its surface.  He could see the body, and were there faces in the glass, in the windows?  Were people standing looking out and waiting for him to arrive?  No, no there weren’t.  It had stopped raining but the sky was still a wool sheet, flat but faintly streaked like the wool on an actual sheep’s body.  He slowed down.  Where are the faces, the looky-loos?  No one was interested.  And that’s the impression they wanted to give.  Tito almost felt lonely for the guy.  Everyone’s busy working, I guess, Tito thought, Or so I’m supposed to think.  Well, time to guard the scene then.  And note anything unusual, should something unusual actually appear to my sight.  “Prizers,” the company was called.  Hmm.  Prizers.  Prizers.  Don’t know it, Tito thought.  Tito got on his radio.  “Officer Lorenzo here.  I’m at the scene.  Who called it in?”  “You’re at the scene, copy that.  I will check, hold on, over.”  Tito parked in a spot with a number 6 on it.  He looked around.  There were about ten vehicles present in the lot.  “A woman named Helen called it in,” the radio voice then said. “Helen Wisk.”  Helen Wisk.  “Can you call her back and have her come outside to see me?  I’m going to get her statement.  Over.”  “I can do that.  Over.”  “Thanks.  Over and out.”   Tito looked at the body then, as though for the first time.  He saw a man, slender and in his early forties, wearing a suit with a tie that was unremarkable—straight and black.  But then there was the remarkable fact that the tie had been loosened as though the man was, not arriving at work, but leaving work, as though he had just finished work rather than was just starting.  Do ties loosen that way in a struggle?  Tito didn’t think so….Was it possible that the murder happened last night and no one had noticed the body in the parking lot the entire time after showing up this morning?  No, that wasn’t possible.  Still, why had the man undone his tie?  On his way into work?  He was unshaven also.  An all-nighter?  Perhaps….  But then—Tito looked at the clock on the radio.  it was a quarter-past ten.  That meant that it had been called in at around 10.   The body had not been seen by anyone upon their arrival that morning.   So when had the murder happened?   Yeah, the body had only been seen when–but just then, Tito saw a woman come out of the building and make her way toward him.  She was wearing an overcoat and Tito noticed that she avoided looking at the dead man.  But then she looked back and—normal enough, Tito thought.  What was he expecting?  Tito rolled his window down.  “Helen?  Helen Wisk?”  “Yes.”  “You called it in?”  “Yes.”  “I’m wondering if I can have a word.”  “Sure.  Okay.”  Yes, everything is normal, Tito found himself thinking.  Everything feels perfectly just square.  And this means that this was not any kind of surprise for anyone, and that everyone thinks, or believes, they know something about this, one thing or another.  When she was inside, Tito knew his first question without even having to think it up.  “Did you know that man, the deceased?” he asked.  “Yes, that’s Larry.  Larry Wiseman.”   “Did he work here?”  “Yes,” Helen said, “He was one of the people in charge of promoting the talent.  With media and press.  But not just them.  Agencies also.”  Hmm, Tito thought, someone left him there this morning for everyone to see.  All those windows.  Whatever could have made them think they wouldn’t be spotted?

Dora Lynn O’Grady discovered that Tony Proctor lived in the same building as her only after the merger between the two agencies.  Tony and she had worked for the same agency, for Elfman Wares and Tides, but she had had little to do with Tony in all that time, until recently, when Dora Lynn actually wondered if Tony might secretly have “a thing” for her.  This was something that she could only laugh about though, laugh at Tony about, and furthermore, she knew she was self-aware enough to realize that, and that if Tony was also somewhat self-aware, (and he was, at least somewhat, she could tell), he would not have permitted himself wanting her in that way, certainly not wanting that to last, not if he could have had anything to do with it, which he maybe could.  Oh, they were all shallow in this industry, were they not?  All of them, and given over at times even to romantic or sentimental feelings when they became caught on something, she was sure enough of this in having mostly grown out of it herself.  Yes, Dora Lynn was no longer a child of her youth, but a woman of their industry’s fickle and capricious desiderata, which had used to remind her of a man’s essential needs, the industry’s needs being exactly where their own needs should be concerned, not even really pretending otherwise, not really, but instead being ready to invite each other’s sympathy in an unspoken effort, and needing to show an ability, to show modesty out of consideration for people who weren’t of their own “cultural idiosyncrasies.”  The other company, they had called themselves, “Prizers.”  And now they were “Prizers-Elfman.”  That other company.  They had won the battle, although Elfman Wares and Tides, her company, had put up very little of a fight.
She was as surprised as anyone would have been to see that Tony Proctor lived in her building.  Well, “surprised” wasn’t the word.  The night she initially discovered it, she couldn’t have been sure he actually lived there.  She was coming in from one of her nightly runs around the neighbourhood.  And Tony, well she could smell the booze on him.  There they were in the elevator together then, Tony saying nothing, just staring vacantly, a look on his face that showed he was unwilling to say anything at all to her about his state.  He recognized her too then, she could tell, at just that moment.  He lived on one of the lower floors, did he not?  Yes, on the fourth floor.  Dora Lynn was on the 18th.  And what was that she could smell on him?  She had smelled it on her dad plenty enough times.  Rye.  Rye had that distinct smell, like strong cough syrup.  She couldn’t have been sure that he did live there himself, not until she saw him in the lobby on another day.  Again, they never said anything to each other, but instead, Dora Lynn made the point of walking more quickly in the direction she was headed, as though to tell him that they needn’t make a special effort to be social with one another.  But that was before the merger.  Who had said that rye was like strong medicine?  That it smelled like it too?   Was that the only reason that Dora Lynn thought rye smelled like strong cough syrup?  Her dad had told her, a rye drinker himself, so she had smelled it plenty of times.  And what else had he said?  That she should go for lunch with her betters often, as often as they ask, and she should even ask them sometimes if they want to get lunch.  On her.  That was how you made connections, Dora Lynn knew, through conversation over lunch.  But never ask them any questions.  Ask no questions and they won’t feel that they ever need to tell you something untrue—and they’ll know, they’ll choose to believe, that you can look after yourself.
She had gone for lunch with Marcy.  Marcy’s friend was there.   That was when she heard the news about Larry.   The man named Larry from Prizers.   That he had been killed.  Murdered.  Marcy’s friend looked into her plate of greens and began taking her fork and separating them and then stacking them together so she could take more than several at a time.  Dora Lynn remembered this now, was remembering this now, even though she barely noticed her friend doing this at the time.  Where was Marcy’s friend from?  Never ask any questions.  And Marcy never shared anything, never anything at all, but all she said was that it was “a tragedy.”  Was it really a tragedy though?  The only thing Dora Lynn could ever remember from her university English classes was that things people called tragedies actually weren’t really tragedies, and the professor who said this, said this with an air of disdain, yes a disdainful air, because—well, why.  What did it matter what people called something like a man getting murdered?  Tragedy meant it was bad, awful even.  So why did it matter that they called something like a murder this if that’s what it was, if by that a person only meant that it was something “awful,” “terrible,” and “sad.”  Well, Marcy then said that she would be sending Larry’s partner flowers, that Larry’s partner worked downtown at the new building for insurance—she was an insurance adjustor, and Marcy knew what that meant, that they’d be looking into different claims and people who she might have been connected to.  Was this true?  Would they?  Of course, Dora Lynn wouldn’t ever have asked this of Marcy.  If she had only three questions in life ever to ask anyone, this would not have been one of them.  But she did ask Marcy something, did she not?  “She works at the new building,” Dora Lynn had said, “Do you know her name?”  “Her first name is Hilary.”  And then Dora Lynn: “I think I might send her flowers also.  I feel bad now.”  “Why do you feel bad?”  “Because before the merger happened none of us really got along.”  “Oh, I see.  Well, I think it’d be nice of you to send flowers.”  Always go for lunch if they offer, Dora Lynn’s father had said.  Know people and don’t worry so much about knowing things.  What did he mean by that?  What sorts of things should she not worry about knowing?  Know people, true, but should she know “things” about people?  Or should she simply not worry about knowing things of the world.  But she should know people, and things about them, instead.  What sorts of things did Dora Lynn know about Marcy, or should she make an effort to not spend time thinking about those things?  Would they simply interfere with what knowing people was really about, with what there really was to gain from knowing about people?  Or had her dad meant that she should know those things about people also and not worry about knowing things merely of the world, things of one’s own life, including one’s own desiderata, and things of one’s own experience?   What did people matter anyway?
Her phone chimed and she opened her e-mail.  The flowers had been delivered.  On the card, she had written, “I’m so sorry for your loss, Hilary.  Please accept my sincere condolences.  Sincerely, Dora Lynn O’Grady of Prizers-Elfman.”   Was it too soon to send flowers?  Well, it was too late now.  And was it maybe not appropriate to send flowers following a murder?  Of course, she could consider these questions only after they were sent.  But no, no, it was appropriate.  She could still feel the emotion running high on this day, spilling over the sides of her own banks.  She had things to say now.  Things about the murder.  She could say them, she knew, because she had done the right thing and shown solidarity with the victim’s partner.  She sat down and opened her computer.  She opened up the application, turned on the microphone and camera, and pressed record.  It was time to address everything that was happening, the merger and now the murder of Larry Wiseman.  “Hi, everyone,” she began, “I have some sad and disturbing news to share with you today.  If not for it, I would have had happy news.  Well, happy news as it still is, the sad news certainly overshadows it.  As you may or may not know, since we last spoke, although it was reported several days ago, our company, Elfman Wares and Tides has merged with our best and most respected competitor, Prizers.  We are now Prizers-Elfman, and all of us at Elfman Wares and Tides are ecstatic about this.  Unfortunately, something very terrible has happened to ruin this happy event.  A member of what was formerly that other team, of Prizers, and who was just made a member of our new team, Prizers-Elfman, was found dead this morning.  His death occurred under suspicious circumstances.  I will be interviewing a team member of Prizers today to talk about their company and what the merger of our two teams means for them, and I’ll also of course get their thoughts on the loss of their friend and colleague.  And then I will be “following the tides” as we usually do.  I’ve got two new stocks that I’m recommending to people.  You’ll definitely want to stick around for that.  But first we should take a moment to have a word from one of our sponsors.”  Her phone then rang and it was the person to whom she had made the request for the interview, Lindsay Frolick, formerly of Prizers.  “Lindsay?”  “Yeah, hey.  Are you ready for the interview?”  “I am.”  “Okay.  Are you recording?”  Dora Lynn brought up the split screen and hit record on her phone.  “Yes.  I’m recording now.  Terrible news today. ”  The faces of the two of them looked good there, side-by-side, they of Prizers-Elfman.  “Isn’t it though?  We’re all shocked.  Larry was a good man.”  “Yes, I can imagine.  I’m sure he was.”  “The police interviewed everyone today, but no one knows anything about anything.”  “That must have been stressful.  No doubt you want this day to end.  I only have a few questions for you.  Not about the murder of course.  But about our two companies.”  “Yes, of course.  That was what we had planned, wasn’t it.  When we planned this interview.  So shall we?”  “We shall.  Alright, first question….”
It was so much easier, Dora Lynn now sometimes still thought, when you knew all that people were supposed to think about and to know and all that they were not supposed to think about and to know.  She had always simply known this herself, even when knowing nothing else, yes, ever since she was a small child.  Life had got easy for her when she realized and embraced this as something unique about herself, accepted it about her world in general actually, that if there was ever going to be only one thing she needed to know, that that was it, and that that might actually be all there had to be to anything that mattered.  And what else was there really?

The call came as Tito expected it would, but sooner than expected.  Wilf Dobson wanted to see him at the diner.  So Tito sat down and Wilf asked, “You’re not thinking you’re about to work this murder, are you?”  “No, why.  Why do you ask?”  “Because I know you answered the call to secure the scene.  But then I also know you interviewed the woman who called it in.”  Wilf’s girlfriend worked radio dispatch and Wilf knew to ask her.  But Tito was unfazed.  “If I decide to work it a little, I don’t see anything wrong with it.  It’s my own time.”  “Suit yourself. It’s just people think this one could be a long goodbye.  The forever kind.”  “What do I care what they think?”  “Well, maybe we care. About you.”  Tito sighed.  “Caring can be good,” he said, “I care about solving a murder.  I’ll send you all a postcard, after I’ve been promoted.”  Wilf grimaced at this, then said, “Be careful, why don’t you.  Don’t just be.  But be careful.”  “Don’t say that unless you’re willing to actually help.  We’re public servants.”  “I know what we are.”  Tito then smacked a quarter onto the table and slid it toward the table’s centre.  “For your time,” he said.  Then he got up and walked out.

“You have to put your own things away when you’re living with someone else.  Okay, Tony?”
“Yeah, I know,  I know.  I’m still learning.  It’s ’cause I’ve got six different ball caps and I’ve got to wear a different one at different times.”
“Yes, but it’s not just the ball caps.  It’s your plates.  Your food after you’ve dished out—our food.  It’s sometimes leaving things like towels lying around.  I thought you said you’ve lived with other people before.”
“Yeah, well, yeah, okay.   I have.  It was just different back then, I guess.”
“Well, how so?”
“You gotta stop doing that.  Asking after everything I say all the time.  Like, you’re trying to, I don’t know.  I don’t know what you’re trying to do.  Whatever you’re trying to do, that’s not how to do it.”
“Well, what am I supposed to say?  That’s pretty much all I got.  To work with, right?”
“I don’t know.  Look it, I gotta get going now.  So….”
“So?”  Tony came over to her and held her arms.  He gave them a little shake.  Helen looked away.   She said, “I want this to work, because it’s not like you and I don’t have feelings for each other.”  Tony looked away then and Helen felt the room go all starry-eyed and swirly.   She gathered herself then.  She didn’t know what she wanted either, did she.  That was his problem.  They were trying this out because they both believed they deserved an honest shot at it.  But did he, could he, love her?  Truly, for real?   Tony held her hands and then sought her face once more.  “I have to go,” he said, “Have to.  Still learning, okay?”  Had he ever lived with others before?  It was difficult to tell.  If he hadn’t, how had he been successful as a realtor?  Well, that was it.  He hadn’t been successful at it.  But they were both deserving of an honest shot, were they not?  Everyone was.
Tony slipped his iPod into the cradle on the dashboard and pulled out of his spot in the parking lot.  He hit play and the podcast started.  And so did Tony—because that was how it had to be.  For one, Tony knew you didn’t get ahead in life unless you knew your own place and, in occupying that so that others could not take it from you, became your own original self.  Yes, but also while passing in the impressions of others as a convincing model, an exemplar, for “someone like them” or, more likely, for “someone not as lucky” for not knowing and possessing their own original place.  Because people needed to assuage exactly that in themselves, their guilt for not being able to help, for not being someone who could help someone else.  So you had to look that part, be that part, also.  As he heard the voice telling him about so-called Snowmen where he came from, Tony knew that this, exemplar status, was what it meant to become an adult, laying claim to this position of exemplar for oneself but just so that others could eventually form and possess their own original position from knowing they too had to become who they truly were.  You were part of the true constellation of our human universe, were you not?  But that was the tricky part, because it was a competitive industry, and the exemplar position was sought after by everyone, whether they realized it or not.  Because you simply couldn’t succeed by being someone else.  This was the plan of the universe not because the universe had any special affection for originals but because the universe was hopelessly, utterly, undergoing change all the time.  “The solar system can be made a diorama, can it not?”  So the voice of Benoit’s disciple was now saying.  But Tony knew the universe beyond it, the human and natural universe, required a constant stream of originals who knew their way, who had learned it from other originals, but not from being like them, but from becoming one’s own original self.   It was simple, was it not?   The new required the original, and one could only be original from one’s own special mould, from one’s birth, life, and subsequent rebirth, when one left the cradle determined by other originals.  Tony was happy to help others but only so long as they didn’t try to displace him solely out of ignorance—that was the thing, the risk involved in the task of actually being someone who was respected in this industry.  For perhaps knowing how to help the human race survive the natural law of change in the natural world.  Unlike this guy now talking, this new colleague of theirs.  A Prizers guy.  People learned by trial and error, and to learn yourself, to learn a better way, you unavoidably had to sometimes challenge or displace someone else where they were, where they had become hardened like stone.  Tony wouldn’t allow another broadcaster’s disciples to come after him anymore, not even in play like cubs or pups would do, not even in that way.  He pulled over.  He wanted to hear the actual words being said now, but he sometimes had to hear himself think along with them first.  What had he really heard just now?  Yes, what are you saying, man?  What was this student of Benoit’s actually saying, saying at this time especially?  It was like Star Wars, was it not?  Or something….How Benoit had once been—that had been so Benoit.  Benoit had simply never had the depth.   And what was his disciple preaching to people without actually preaching?  But this guy actually was preaching.  The fucker was totally preaching.   He was selling something, selling something of spirit, like religion, that people would then think they needed, to be convinced they needed him especially, that they needed his own knowledge of spirit, so that they would live with the idea and the reality associated with this, with what he was saying to them.  And then what?   He would sell them on something, something for him then to cash in on, what lay hidden from people all along, but that they had then themselves unknowingly served.  “Move on people!  Move on!”  Why not, right?  Why not?  Why can’t they?  It’s obvious, no?   “Or are you not strong enough?”  You’re right–they’re not strong enough yet.  They’d be foolish to think they ever could be.  Not for what you’re preaching.  “You need to learn that the best things in life are free!  Free of the money that only made you a slave and free of your guilt for money’s and other people’s possession of yourself!   Be independent!  But to do that you need to move on!  And I!  I, myself!  Me!  I’ll show you how!   So, here we go, here’s how we–” Tony switched off the radio.  He wasn’t wrong about what could only be right, but Tony knew this disciple of Benoit’s was in on the take too.  And this was even worse than just selling shit, because people were never ready to hear that they could be, could ever be, entirely free of money or of other people, were never ready to hear that they could ever really survive such a life in this world, especially when the people selling it to you were only doing so because they were getting rich off of it.  Benoit and his disciples were selling snake oil to line the pockets of some well-connected and influential people in the industry, and Tony knew, Tony simply just knew, that this had already gotten one man killed.  And the merger would only make the Benoits richer and more influential, because everyone was simply going to let the people from Prizers have things just their way.  But it didn’t matter right now, at this moment, did it?  Because it couldn’t.  Tony had places to be and people in relation to whom to pretend that everything was still the same, that you could let things, everything that was happening, just fade from your awareness whenever you felt like it, that it was okay for people never to have to be different than they were simply expected to be, that it was perfectly fine for people to believe that nothing ever had to change in ways that required they risk themselves by standing up or for oneself as an original.  Because when you had to become an exemplar, and everyone else was trying to too, whether they realized they were or not, then you didn’t just have to know your place, but occupy and possess it as your own truly and completely.

The first name on Tito’s list was Drew Shepherd, one of five people who had worked for either Prizers or Elfman Wares and Tides who had form.  Drew Shepherd, from Prizers, had more serious form than anyone else, so Tito decided he might find some things to keep busy with if he hung out at the places Drew Shepherd mentioned on his broadcasts.  Yes, Drew had given Tito a fair amount of material and connections from which to establish something of a grid, although it was certainly too early for anything like real suspicion much less for a theory or list of suspects.  Drew Shepherd and Matthew Lindman were friends, and Matthew Lindman, from Elfman Wares and Tides, had form also.  But Drew Shepherd had been twice convicted and Lindman’s DUI (and his broadcasts) made him seem to Tito a young man prone to weakness of character that would make him someone who followed others, to be lead into trouble rather than lead himself, and if the list was anything to go by, Lindman was connected not just to Drew Shepherd among the criminals but Patty Walsh also.  She actually had form for breaking and entry and theft, although that was something she had done in her youth.  Drew Shepherd’s form?  Sexual assault of a minor.  Several counts.  But he was twice acquitted for insufficient evidence, and in one of the acquittals the victim was someone from the community who lacked credibility and might have had a personal motive against Drew Shepherd.
Now Tito found himself parked at Hillcrest and Vickers, a popular place among police officers for making one’s monthly quota for traffic stops.  A little down the street from where he was parked was The Gris-Gris Club, from where Drew Shepherd had said he’d be broadcasting later in the day.  As a Prizers broadcaster, Drew was expected to favour prize-winning products and services and to draw ad interest for and from those companies.  It wasn’t necessarily clear to Tito how it all worked, but Prizers, and now Prizers-Elfman, tended to benefit from their own coverage of the award-winning products and companies they featured on their broadcasts.  The Gris-Gris Club was known for serving award-winning gumbo.  Apart from Tito being skeptical as to whether the gumbo was actually any good as far as authentic gumbo went (although Tito had never tried it), The Gris-Gris Club getting an annual mention for their gumbo in the city newspaper’s yearly awards was enough exposure for Drew to broadcast from there whenever he felt like it.  Apparently, Drew Shepherd liked being someone connected with the popular scene in the city, and The Gris-Gris Club’s popularity, Tito supposed, could only make Drew himself even more visible and popular.  This was also good for Prizers-Elfman.  So, it was all connected, from award-winning gumbo highlighted in the local paper to being a popular host of a broadcast at the club where the gumbo was served, to the synergetic symbiosis between the club, the award-winning gumbo, the broadcast, and the host of the broadcast, everything amplifying and/or magnifying everything else so that advertisers could promote their own product with more confidence and maybe be put up for some awards themselves.  You had started out on Prizers paying for ad space, and then maybe you won an award and could then be featured in a broadcast.  But then what?  Where did you go from there?  Tito didn’t know.  Was any of this related to Larry Wiseman’s murder?  It had happened at the same time as the merger, but Tito knew very well that that detail might not be important.  In fact, perhaps whoever had capped Larry Wiseman did so at the time of the merger simply to make the investigators think there was some deeper connection when there really wasn’t.
He hadn’t been parked there an hour when a red muscle car ran a red light that was adjacent to the club.  The car had actually left the club’s parking lot and the light would have been difficult to see because the lot merged with the street at the street’s end, just before the intersection.  But still, there was no reason for the driver to think it was green.  Well, thought Tito, I might as well see who can afford a sixty-thousand-dollar ride these days.  So Tito put on the blues-and-reds and squawked the siren a couple times and the head on the driver’s side in the muscle car looked up and then the car proceeded to pull over.  It was definitely a woman’s head, not a man’s.   Tito pulled in behind and got all his necessaries together so that he could write her a ticket.
She had her picture identification ready to go.  She was rather attractive.  Blond and looking to be in her thirties, she wore sunglasses that were only moderately dark in tint.  Tito made a mental note to look up the sunglasses to see what they cost.   “Officer,” she said before Tito could address her, “I’m sorry.  I didn’t see that it was red.  I completely forgot to look before I made the turn.”   “Yes, it’s a steep angle,” Tito said, accepting her picture ID, “But all the same, we’re cracking down on that particular intersection there.   Because of that particular parking lot.   I noticed that you left The Gris-Gris Club.  Have you been drinking?”  “No, officer.  I was there for the gumbo.  My lunch break.”  “Okay.  Well, I’m obligated to give you a Breathalyzer under the current laws.  Do you have any objections to this?”  “No, officer.  I’m happy to oblige.”  She seemed stricken somehow, but in a way that expressed her own chagrin rather than affrontment, contempt, or grievance in her own defense.  She was clearly of good upbringing and probably the kind of person who didn’t mind, who even understood, what she was being asked to do.  Probably out of consideration of the state of humanity and of others who needed someone like her to be an example.   A good example, Tito thought.  “Ma’am, could you please remove your sunglasses?  I just need to confirm your identification.”   She removed her sunglasses.  “Sorry, Officer.  My apologies.”   The woman’s name was Julie Swanson.  Not a name on Tito’s list.  “Ma’am, because you’ve been so polite, I’m going to let you off this time with a warning.  In the future, note the colour of the traffic light before leaving the parking lot and merging to cross the intersection.”  Tito then handed her identification back to her.   “Officer, thank you.  Thank you so much.  I will absolutely do just that, look both ways and then also at that light.”  “Thank you, ma’am.”   Tito wished her a pleasant day and went back to the car.  He pulled out his cellphone and added a second section to his list of names.  Under the heading, The Gris-Gris Club, he wrote the date and time, and then, “Julie Swanson.”
Tito had been waiting for another thirty minutes, and he was about to give up on Drew Shephard appearing when he saw, actually saw, the vehicle in the parking lot.  He had been looking at that vehicle since he had first arrived.  Looking at it without thinking.  So he ran the license plate and he discovered that it belonged to none other than Drew Shepherd.  He’s been there for at least two hours, Tito thought.  Tito considered tuning into the Prizer-Elfman channel to see if Drew had been broadcasting the entire time.  But then Tito remembered that the broadcast wouldn’t be done live but would likely be posted later on as a recording.  That is, if that was the actual reason Drew Shepherd was in the club that afternoon.  He looked up the name “Julie Swanson” on his phone.  He got no hits that matched the woman he had pulled over.  Yeah, Tito then thought, that’s a bit unlikely.  Not everything’s going to be connected.  And even if some of it does lead somewhere or even just connect up, it’s not like it’ll be so damn easy.  Then Tito remembered the woman’s license plate and that he hadn’t looked at her car registration.   He hadn’t even asked her for it.  So he looked up her plate number, and, sure enough, her car appeared on his screen from the database, a 2024 Chevrolet Camaro, red.  However, the car wasn’t registered to her.  No, the car Julie Swanson was driving was registered to Larry Wiseman, the murder victim.  Was she really the woman she made herself out to be?  And was award-winning gumbo the true reason she had been at The Gris-Gris Club at the same time Drew Shephard was there?  Or was it, rather, a coincidence, The Gris-Gris Club simply being the most popular spot for the Prizers-Elfman set?

The evening moonlight was splendid at this hour–magic hour, it was called.   Tito sat in his own car outside the Centre for the Performing Arts and watched as the members of Prizers-Elfman arrived in their evening’s best for the merger party, each of them seeming to sparkle and glow against the windowed front of the Centre, its interior casting a warm yellow light out upon the pavement where two male staff members enjoyed cigars.  Tito wondered at how the cigars’ embers could be seen so clearly as the smokers inhaled and at how he could also smell the burning tobacco—how everything that seemed so distant could become so close, something that simply and effortlessly becomes part of oneself, something so inescapable as one’s very own experience.  But the feeling on this night was in fact not that of “being there” but of “not being here,” of not actually being anywhere, a somewhat unsettling and even a forlorn feeling, that nights like this were so beyond Tito’s own sense of his place in the world that how others seemed to experience them, how they seemed to realize and enjoy a higher expression of themselves, made him feel his own life and world were less legitimate for not being glamorous, but the very opposite, quite unglamorous.   It bothered Tito that he still had to make the extra effort to remind himself that all that glitters isn’t gold, that all that glamour, most of it, somehow isn’t meant to be anything real, not even to the people who are in and of it.  Fortunately, it was not too dark out yet for Tito to photograph the faces of everyone who was arriving.  He had a book of faces on the seat next to him, the faces of people with their names gathered from what he could find on the company website and elsewhere online, and some of the faces he was seeing on this evening were already in his book, while others were not accessible to him from the online spaces where people simply shared their image, their name, and lived their story.  If there were any faces he couldn’t capture for lack of light, then he could observe them from outside, as there were windows in most rooms on the main floor of the Centre.  So there he’d soon be, standing outside looking in, his feet in the flowers, shrubs, and plants, “creeping” on them all.  And like the effort he had to make of having to realize that glamour wasn’t all that it appeared to be, an effort of not pining for his own shot at a world of glamorous experience, regarding this feeling of “creeping” on everyone, he had to make an even further extra effort not to feel well-pleased with himself, to not feel satisfied with the sense of control and power it gave him to gain possession of people’s images and their names and histories from his own brazen sense of duty as a police officer and by means of the simple click of a button on his cellphone camera.
Tito made special note of the couples that appeared together, and of the people who showed up alone.  He didn’t know why he did this, but it seemed that this was a significant characteristic of someone in their world, if they were married, dating someone, or single.  Actually, he then thought, it mattered for him to know who were already in a relationship, because if he found out they were cheating, then it could either come in handy for him or maybe it was significant to the investigation.  In a couple of cases, he already knew that both members of the couple worked for the newly merged firm.  There were also more couples appearing than people alone.  Of course, he couldn’t know for sure who were actually in a relationship and who were merely appearing together just for the evening.   And he did not recognize everyone as employees of Prizers-Elfman, but he got everyone’s photo, those who were showing up that evening with their partner or alone for the party.  And then it got darker and the faces when they appeared outside were all in shadow, but people kept coming.  The people appearing began to seem more random because they came in clusters and couldn’t be identified.  It was a party to be seen at, to report to others about to show that you had actually been there, but there would be little more Tito could see from where he sat, and he thought of going inside, into the actual party, himself—no one could tell that he shouldn’t be there now, could they?  But he decided that he wanted to remain incognito for as long as this was possible, wanted not to be identifiable at any point until he was ready to make certain moves to establish his own zone of influence, so he decided to wait until it would be dark enough to prowl, to lurk, to stalk–clandestinely, stealthily, without at any point having been seen.  It would get darker yet, and then darker still—they were expecting clouds were they not?–and then it would be his time, Tito’s moment, to approach.
Helen Wisk saw Francesca Rimes now standing with Walter Noon while B.J. Warnecke went to get them both drinks and Helen couldn’t help but feel a little awkward.   You weren’t supposed to show that this was an awkward situation though, were you?  Well, B.J. and Tony were good friends, so what should Helen be prepared to do?  Should she stand and chat or move along?  But B.J. would be back soon, and Tony and B.J. knew nothing.  So Helen, once again, could do nothing except stand and let things happen.  The way they would.  Poor B.J.  And Tony would be livid.  But Helen couldn’t, not after what Francesca had said to Helen when they were alone, about how Walter said he was really only interested in marrying Pauline for her connections to the energy sector through her family.  It was “political,” and everyone knew it, Walter had said.  Walter had ambitions to be a blue blood.  Pauline herself had eyes for the fourth-year quarterback of the university football team.  In a sense, Helen found herself disgusted with them.  But they were all friends, were they not?   And Francesca had shown up with B.J., and B.J. was mad about Francesca.  Did he have any idea?  So Helen said nothing but of course she “made a point” of not reacting at all at now seeing Francesca with Walter, which Francesca made a point of “not seeing as anything really” and then Helen could almost hear it in her mind, Francesca’s voice: the two of us are old friends after all.   When did one become an actual part of what happened, partly responsible, when one said nothing while being fully aware?  It was that murder, wasn’t it?   For Helen, that showed you that things could always count towards something, something awful.  Not everything counted, but some things did.  “It’s like crazy now,” Francesca was now saying, “This is such a crazy thing, how we’re all going to be celebrities in a few months’ time.   Whether we’re ready for it or not, I mean.”  Francesca, unlike Helen, was from Elfman Wares and Tides.  “That’s a funny way to think about it,” Walter was saying, “I mean, it’s surreal, that you can say that and mean it and it’s true, but it’s nothing that anyone is prepared for.”  “I’m prepared for it though,” Francesca said, “I’m ready for it.   I mean, I know how that sounds, right?   But let’s face it, I’ve been doing this since I was thirteen.   Hey, did you ever talk to the people who complained about that thing with POTUS?  The golfing thing?”  “POTUS?  Oh, you mean when we analyzed some of his shots on the course.”  They had gotten access to his caddy for one of the rounds POTUS had played when he was in Scotland.  Helen stood thinking that POTUS’s choice of clubs, his own club choice, was probably fair game as long as you were sure about everything.  But they could have made it all up, couldn’t they have?   They knew which clubs he used of course—the business with the caddy was now famous lore in their circles, how POTUS liked to overrule his caddies–but the stuff about which clubs he used for the shots that he duffed, and how he faired in any given round, none of that went over well with the people they represented, even though POTUS had, in that round, used their competitors’ clubs, and even though it was all done respectably.  Golf culture was a funny thing.  They could be offended over just about anything, anything they chose to be offended over, and it really mattered, it really counted against you, and you could never be really sure whether they were really being honest about the real reason, whether it was all just a deception to go a different way, to make a certain move or to go with someone else.  “You won’t be able to pull a stunt like that now,” Francesca was saying, “Now that we’re syndicated with Next Tuesday.”  “I was never really in trouble though.  And that’s something that Next Tuesday probably actually doesn’t mind.  It was the club people.   Because someone had said that he was using their clubs.  That’s what they said.  But it turned out he wasn’t.  But they’re still sticking with us, you know.  I don’t know why eyebrows went up.  It’s not like there’s ever been a President who never misses a shot.  I don’t know though.  It wasn’t smart, I’ll admit.  But now everyone knows which clubs he actually uses and when.  And the shots he’s most likely to miss.”   “After one round though?”  Tony said this as he handed Helen her spritzer and B.J. handed Francesca her Diet Coke.  “Well, yeah, that’s this caddy though.  He’s caddied for POTUS before.  He’s always missing those shots.  That’s what he says.   It was never meant to be just about that one round of golf.”
Devin Murdoch was strictly their helper, their friend in low places.  But pretty soon, Devin thought…Pretty soon….They were managing okay, it seemed, but now that Devin was no longer using, himself, he could kind of see what people always thought about it, about the lifestyle and the culture.  A couple of idiots they could be, not even loveable idiots. ”Are you sure you don’t…want?”  Boychuk always rubbed his teeth.  Lester never did.   A couple of boys who hadn’t got around to thinking about becoming men of the real world yet.  “No, it’s all for you guys now.  I need money up front from now on by the way.  I can’t front you guys anything anymore.”  That’s because it had always been Devin’s own stash, and then he would charge them thirty to fifty percent more than he paid for it.  Sometimes he’d buy thirty to fifty percent more the next round.  But now that he wasn’t using, himself.   “All good?”  “All good, Devin.  All good.”
Dora Lynn was waiting for Devin.  She didn’t know everything but she knew Devin was no longer using, that he was trying to turn things around for himself.  “Shall we?”  “Let’s get something from drive-thru first,” Devin said.  It was a weird thing.  He was no longer using but he’d still get the craziest munchies.  It was like a conditioning thing, from simply being around the stuff.  He would probably need six cheeseburgers just to make it through the rest of the night.   Everything would be fine once they both met with Eagleton.  Eagleton knew of some stuff that had gone wrong and it wasn’t planned or anything like that.  Nobody was supposed to get killed, just taught a lesson.  But now Dora Lynn had to make sure that some new people of hers weren’t caught in the middle of it.  That was their price apparently.  Along with future consideration.  When they, meaning the police, came to her, she would tell them what she knew, which was what Eagleton had been instructed to tell her.  Imagine fucking using people like that though, Devin thought.  The two of them had put in an appearance anyway.  They said their goodbyes and left the Centre.  They got into Dora Lynn’s car.  “Which drive thru?” Dora Lynn asked. “You’re not going to keep dealing to those guys now, are you?”  “No, I won’t.  Why would I?”  Devin would help them out occasionally though, no?  Well, it depended on how serious this whole thing with Dora Lynn got.  Dora Lynn could be emotionally needy and also extremely demanding.  But if you were on Dora Lynn’s side, you had beer in the fridge, steak and eggs for breakfast, and good grass growing on both sides of your fence.  Dora Lynn was actually the gravy train, money for real.  “I actually don’t know if I’m that hungry.”  “Well, if you’re not hungry then why are we stopping?”  “Because I always get hungry.  At some point.”  “But you didn’t use this time.”  “I…yeah, I didn’t use last time and I got so fucking hungry I thought that I.…”  “You thought that you what.”  “I thought that I would break a nut just to feel like something else.”  Dora Lynn looked over at him and smiled.  “Feel like what, a demented chipmunk?”   Was she really into it though?  She seemed interested, but she might be using Devin now the way she was being used.  They were both in it, weren’t they.  Why was Devin though?  How had he ended up involved in transporting the body in broad daylight in Eric Long’s tipper truck?  Where had Eric been at the time?  And how did they have his keys?  It made no fucking sense.  That’s probably why he wasn’t hungry at this point, no?
Tito was pretty sure he had everyone’s image, standing there at the window in the dark, in the wood chips with the plants and the herbaceous scents of early autumn.  It was a crowd first of all but they somehow still struck one as complete individuals if nothing else.  Each of them was now a distinct person within the group, and yet you couldn’t really understand who they really were as people simply from observing each of them, how they were, within that group.  Knowing them as individual people, that would be like exactly missing the point of who they really were at this time.  One thing you did know: You knew they were for themselves first.  But then, as he was moving away, heading back to his car, he saw her.  He recognized her, had already taken her photo that evening.  She was the woman, the girl really, that he had interviewed, the one who had first seen the body and called 911.  Seeing her tonight, on her walk, and as she turned, yes, she had turned to look, and then she saw Tito!   Tito next to the window! What was he to her?   When she saw him then?   A shadow?  A figure in the night?   A member of the press?   She must have nearly made him out.  She must have wondered who was standing there, who would be standing there, in that spot, looking through the window and taking all their images.  But then, then she had turned away.  Suddenly.  She had turned away suddenly, as though experiencing a jolt of realization.  As though she knew to avoid being seen seeing him.  Why?  Yes, just to pretend that she hadn’t actually seen him.  Why?   Why did this matter?  Had the light from inside the Centre illuminated his face?  Had she actually seen him to know him as the policeman who had interviewed her about Larry Wiseman’s murder?  Well, she had actually seen him then, hadn’t she?  But just then he couldn’t know for sure.  Regardless of whether she had, he would have to go on pretending that she hadn’t actually seen him for the man he was and that she wouldn’t tell everyone that he, Officer Tito Lorenzo, had actually been, physically had been, present that evening, observing everyone.  What if she did though?  What if she had actually seen him?  It didn’t matter that much, did it?  It did, Tito knew.  It did matter.  It was everything.  The little these people knew made them feel vulnerable to the others, made them cover themselves, and become deceitful, made what they did become a game for their own survival, a game with themselves at the center, in which they would try to play everyone, and it made everything duplicitous, made everything impossible to trust or believe.  The little they knew made them impenetrable, untrustworthy, if not entirely inaccessible from the start.   That’s who they were.  That’s why they couldn’t be known “as individual people.” And if they decided to get together now, to close ranks….If they decided to put the group at the center of everything….That’s exactly who they were as individuals within their group.  They looked after each other if that’s what was needed to look after themselves, to survive as individuals.  That’s what he hadn’t known before.  That’s how they survived, both as individuals and as a group.  But it was too late.  So did she actually see him?  Or didn’t she?   It might be something he would never ever know, and it could be something that was the difference between life and death, for someone like him, for someone like her, or for someone neither of them could never ever know.

Darcy Eagleton stood at his living room window watching Dora Lynn and her friend leave.  He stood there with Pat Gables still sitting at the table, shuffling cards.  Pat was always there, wasn’t he, always in the background.   He never had to do much of anything, never had to stand looking and thinking as Eagleton now did, wondering if it would actually all work out.  No, Pat got to be idle through everything—which was how he had actually survived the world they had all had to live in, Eagleton, Pat, Fred, Stereo Jan, who else?  Paul.  Who among the rest of them were ever idle?  Well, was Eagleton someone different from the rest of them?  He was.  They hadn’t all had the close scrapes Eagleton had had to survive.  Eagleton had never had much luck.  He had always had to look out for himself.  That was why, why Pat was with Eagleton, was it not?  Because Pat could be safe with Eagleton.  Pat picked up his beer can and shook it.   He felt that it was empty—a few drops of beer actually rattling in there.  He tried taking a sip anyway.  Was he planning on staying for another?  He put the empty can on the table and got up.  “So?  You’re staying for another?”  “Yeah, I thought one more.”  “What’d you think?  Should I…trust them to go along with everything?”  Pat said nothing.  Eagleton knew he shouldn’t ever ask Pat—only, he wanted another view.  But Pat’s?  Pat sat down again and returned to shuffling cards.  Eagleton was responsible for Pat—there was only one Pat for Eagleton to mind even though Pat was the most common two-legged mammal within the herd.  But you never ever saw him suffer for anything because he was always someone’s other than his own responsibility.  Everyone learned the hard way, but from day one, guys like Pat were the beneficiaries of everything everyone else came to learn.  To learn for them, on their behalf.
“Okay, you can have one more.  But what happened to this idea that you would pay for the beer once in a while?”  “Don’t know.  Sorry.  Sorry, Darcy.  I just had to help my dad with something the other day.”  “Oh?  With what?”  “He’s investing in a new—oh, it’s nothing.  Nothing you’d be interested in.”  “Oh?  Well, I am interested.  Because you promised.”  “Yeah, yeah.  Okay.  Sorry about that.  Next time.”  “Yes, next time.  And not the swill that costs seventy cents a can.  Good stuff.  Okay?”  “Okay.”  Eagleton found he wasn’t worried the way he should be.  What could they do?  Kill him?   They could, but…they would.  They would do him like it was said they did Tjersky.  He was about Eagleton’s age when they did him.  They wrapped him in plastic and threw him off a cliff into the sea, but first they messed with him.  Was it true?  Supposedly he floated around out there, bobbed around out there, amongst the waves, but the fall would have killed him, no?   They said that that plastic would have made a perfect floatation tank.   Floating all alone out there…in the ocean, under the stars. “You ever see that mother of yours?”  It was Pat’s mom who had made sure Eagleton would look out for Pat.  “Nope.  Gone for good.”  Pat had no decency, but that wasn’t his fault.  “You should see her.  Because some day she will be.  Really gone for good.  And you’ll miss her.”  He seemed to feel this just now, but how?  How did he feel it?  What was something like that to a guy like Pat?  They never found Tjersky, but the point is, they messed with him like that first because he was old, too old to care, didn’t give a shit anymore.  But imagine a guy like that, coming to an end like that.  A guy who had been like Eagleton used to be and was at the end like Eagleton was now.  “Who knows though.  Right?  Maybe she’s better off this way?”  He asks it like he’s still a child.  Well, he is a child.  “Yeah, but the point is, you may not be.   Better off.  You’d be better off seeing her every once in a while and mending your ways with her.”  Why was he thinking of Tjersky now though.  The legend of Tjersky.  His end.  There was a lesson in this life for everyone, absolutely everyone.  You didn’t know it until it was your time—until it was your time to learn it and then it was your lesson.  Would Pat ever go so far as to think Dora Lynn wouldn’t go along with it?  Of course she would.  What did it matter what Pat thought unless Pat acted on such thoughts, on his suspicions?  “I didn’t mind her.  Dora.”  “Oh  yeah?”  “But him.”  “What about him.  What do you know about him.  Pat.  What are you going on about.  You got to just stay out of it.”  “Oh, no.  I was just….Never mind.”  Eagleton headed over to the radio.  He flipped it on.  He didn’t want Pat to be thinking anymore about what he had just heard not even twenty minutes ago.  But what did any of them really know about Pat?  Was he innocent?  Highly–highly–unlikely.  Not at all.  Still, that was the problem, no?  They all acted, they all pretended, amongst themselves, that Pat was innocent, for Pat’s own sake.   Because….And that was why someone like Pat should know very little about what they all had to get involved in.  Had to.…(“I just don’t see why you need a fourth player at that position…We need to get to our third caller now.   Thank you.  We agree with you, but it’s a small matter at this point, the matter being decided when your first tailback is injured….Yes, but four tailbacks–Yes, we thank you for your call.  We really do.  Okay, our next caller now.”)….Eagleton didn’t get this shit people were involved with now.   Influencing.   Influencing each other.  He just didn’t understand why anyone would want that or even think people would want that.  What was Eagleton going to do if Dora Lynn didn’t go along with everything?  He knew what he feared now, what he feared the most.  It was being turned into a story, an urban legend, like Tjersky.  That’s not how Eagleton would ever want to be remembered.  Not by his son.  He would want his son to see him as someone who looked after someone like Pat.  That was the way to be in this community, was it not?  People respected him for it, did they not?  But he knew that his son was more like him than they would both care to admit.  He knew people around here feared his son.  But that’s only because…because otherwise, you ended up like Tjersky.  Now Eagleton gave a shit, but still, he wouldn’t do anything about it…(“and that’s if memory serves me right.  I still think that we should have gone for the two-point conversion.  It’s true that we won, but….Well, decisions like that are always something that fluctuate, go back and forth, throughout the year.  You win some, you lose some.  But at least, we won.  By two, it’s true, but a win is always going to”)….“Pat, you good now?”  “Yeah, I think I’ll head home now.  Tired of football.  People talk about it too much, you know?”  “Well, it gets their minds off other things, right?”  “Yeah, I guess.”   “I’ll give you a lift home.”  “That’s okay.  I want to stop by the store.”  “I’ll take you there.  Take you there myself.  Safer that way.”  Yes, it was true, that was how he wanted to be remembered.  For always, for unfailingly, making sure his people always got home safe.  His own people though, it was true.  And of course, not everyone had.  So what though?  What did anything really matter?   Well, so then, who would ever go along with, who would ever even consider, remembering Darcy Eagleton—Darcy “The Devil”  Eagleton, it was true–in exactly, in just, that way?

It would always be true that they both came from respectable families, but it had always been different for Tony because his parents were both blue collar civil employees, although paid well under the municipal authority, while Helen’s parents had been white collar members of the federal and provincial government civil service, well-educated professionals in their roles as staff within a bureaucracy that Tony had little understanding of until his mid-twenties, which was when he learned that the advice his labouring father had given him repeatedly throughout his life—“Don’t ever burn bridges” and “it’s always about who you know”—might all have been true but that it was impossible to live by this “advice” and actually find decent work and earn a respectable living.   Real estate had taught him that while it was one thing not to burn bridges, it was another thing  for people to like or respect you and that, sometimes, you were better off letting a bridge catch fire if there was nothing you could do to prevent that from happening anyway, because otherwise you would be living under it forever, that bridge, stuck with someone over you who had no real concern for you, just the opposite, just indifference or even callous disregard, which might be worse than anything else.  As far as it’s always being about who you knew, everyone got the same advice, knew the same sorts of people, with everyone seeking the same connections, and it really didn’t matter who you knew because there was very little that the people one was expected to know and that one actually could know would be willing to do to help you over someone else, whom they also knew, perhaps as well or even better than they knew you.  People didn’t want to help someone out if that meant interfering in a process that was something valued as a matter of the national and public culture in a democratic country.  Real estate didn’t work out, but it was mostly because Tony spent too much time being angry over not knowing how to succeed where others did because he had not been given any real advice at any time in his life to actually prepare him for the competitiveness and the socio-economic and cultural barriers that existed against his taking possession of chances that for him were not as good as they were for people who were far more privileged than he was.

Was Helen with Tony now because she sympathized with him?  She understood him, or she truly believed she did.  But she also was becoming aware that, while their families were both respectable, she was someone who had been “interestedly bred and developed,” while Tony was someone who had been “raised and expected to learn from others.”   Tony was “socialized” while she was “formed first” and “socialized second.”  But people would never believe that this had anything to do with the fact that Helen was given over to thinking that she knew more about Tony than Tony could know about her.  She understood Tony, whereas Tony seemed to admire or “respect” rather than understand her.   What she actually knew about Tony presently was that he had been “on edge” since news of the merger.  Tony had actually done well working for Elfman Wares and Tides before the merger, when there were to be untold complications for him that had come of the so-called alliance.  He had said little but it was impossible for her not to see that he was being sidelined, perhaps that he was even sidelining himself.  He had told her that there were “dirty players” at Prizers, and Helen had thought that Tony was merely jealous of the fact that Prizers dealt almost entirely, exclusively, with prize-winning products and services and that their people got to take advantage of endorsements and had far more access to special perks than anyone at Elfman would have ever expected to have prior to the merger.  But Helen had been short-sighted on this.  It was true that Tony was insecure, and a little rough in manner, too principled maybe, at least as far as fitting in anywhere where charisma or charm might be mistaken for genuine talent and substance (such as at Prizers) but he was right about the Prizers people being part of a degrading of quality and standards in the work of the broadcasters themselves.  (As for these, they were mostly salespeople, although they were highly knowledgeable about the products and able to intelligently compare and review everything they presented on their broadcasts).  But it hadn’t really been a merger and had ended up being more of a take-over, a take-over of Elfman Wares and Tides by Prizers.  What did it take to win a prize anyway?  It took someone giving a prize away—that had been the genius of Prizers, that there were non-stop prizes and competitions.  Well, Tony was less interested in “pop culture” and of “making something popular,” which is what working at Prizers ended up being about, and he was more someone who thought of broadcasting as itself a service to people who couldn’t afford to waste their time and money on an experience or an idea or, yes, a product.
“So here we are,” Tony was then saying on his broadcast, “my girlfriend and me are shopping for a car.   That’s a big step, is it not?  Well, what are we looking for?  Well, she and I of course want different things.”  But Tony, that’s not necessarily true—I want you to be happy.  You’re more nervous about this, about getting us both a car, than I am.   “I know people in the car industry, as maybe you’re all aware.  But I also know that when you’re looking for a vehicle to share with someone, that what you both want should matter more than what someone you know might possibly have to offer you.  And maybe that person you know isn’t as reliable right now as you might think.  Things fluctuate, things change in this industry, and you can’t always think it’s about who you know.”   I’ve been thinking along these lines too, Tony.  But I’m also thinking that you wanting to get a car for us to have together, to share, was more about you wanting to show me that you could handle the responsibility of thinking of us both, as a couple.  “Of course, she doesn’t know cars like I do, used cars, like lots of people who grew up in this city do.  I grew up in a culture obsessed with cars, with used cars especially.  This is something that is like a pastime for me.  Growing up, my uncles, cousins, my dad, and my grandad talked about buying used cars all the time, and my grandad even fixed the odd one up to resell for some extra cash.”   As we look at different vehicles and I hear Tony talk to these men and women who are selling, and as I hear him re-staging these conversations with not everything being as it actually happened, I get the sense he might be compensating or going out of his way to convince everyone that he knows more about all this than he really does.  It certainly seemed that the people he actually spoke to were thinking that Tony was nervous or preoccupied with wanting to appear like he knew more than he did, than anyone really could know about any used car.  I now realize that the merger, and then the murder of Larry Wiseman, have thrown Tony completely out of a sense of being in his own natural depths.  Buying a car was his way of taking control again.  And he needed to do it, not just for himself, but for something like “us.”   “So how did we do?  Well, we went with something that we could both be comfortable taking out on the weekends to her parents’ lakefront property.   Say, for a weekend getaway.  I’d say that’s a good sign.  I know the car she had been driving before we went in on this 2019 Honda Civic together was one that she didn’t feel as confident in anymore.  And I always thought it was a girls’ car, not up to Helen’s own level as a woman.  And this one, our car, is certainly an adult car.  Similarly, it’s a car that I’ve always respected on the road whenever I see one, even seeing it and wanting one for myself.  I’d say that this experience has been good for Helen and me, although I wish she had shared more about herself and her experience of cars, including the kind of car that she would have wanted just for herself.   This car, the one we bought, happens to be the car I would want for myself.   I feel in the end that this ended up being a car I bought more for me than for her or even for us both.  That’s just the nature of buying a used car—you end up going with something you’re comfortable with yourself because otherwise you’ll end up stuck with something you’ll regret.”

It was the warranty card which had the Rolex watch’s serial number on it that made it necessary to arrest Samuel Becker.  It was something concrete and undeniable, the serial number on it matching the very watch Becker was wearing and the warranty card itself casting sufficient doubt on Becker’s story.  Becker denied murdering Larry Wiseman and then stealing the watch, but while Becker was wearing the watch at the time of his arrest, he claimed Larry Wiseman sold the watch to him about one week before the discovery of Wiseman’s body, even showing the detectives a receipt with the date of sale and Larry Wiseman’s signature on it.  “You didn’t want the warranty card for the watch?”  “I didn’t know there was one.”  Becker said Larry had gotten the watch as a gift and he had offered to sell it to Becker for a tenth of the retail price because Becker had agreed to appear on someone’s show, someone named Sally Murdoch.   And, well, Becker claimed, Larry simply liked Becker.  Samuel Becker was of course affiliated with the street gang and music group, The Spooky Doo Six.  The warranty card was found in the safety deposit box of the victim, Larry Wiseman, but it was Dora Lynn O’Grady who told detectives that, not only had she heard that Becker of The Spooky Doo Six was not expected to appear on anyone’s show, but Larry Wiseman had still been wearing the watch up to and including the day before he was discovered murdered—“He loved that watch,” Dora Lynn had said, “I always saw it on him.  It always caught my eye.  He never would have sold it—not at any price.”  So Becker’s claim that he had purchased the watch one week earlier appeared to be completely false.   “Are you sure that it was the same watch?”   They asked Dora Lynn this even though she had made a point of telling them she was sure.  “I’m sure.  But that’s not all.  Larry Wiseman had never wanted Becker to appear on Sally Murdoch’s show.  He thought Becker was too controversial.  Larry didn’t really like Samuel Becker.  Not at all.  And Samuel Becker didn’t like Larry Wiseman.”   But there was more.  There was a witness in the person of Ernie Lemming, who said that he was in the bar the night both Becker and Larry Wiseman were seen together, which would make that the last time Larry Wiseman was seen alive, the night before the morning Wiseman’s body turned up outside the Prizers-Elfman building.   And while the bartender remembered both Larry and Becker being there that night, he didn’t ever see them meeting.  However, he thought probably Lemming was right, that probably they had sat down with each other at some point.  In being questioned, Samuel Becker was denying everything, saying that he had not met Larry Wiseman that evening as Earnest Lemming claimed and that Ernest Lemming was simply lying about that detail.  He had been in the bar but hadn’t seen Larry Wiseman, not at all.   He actually didn’t think Larry was even there that night.   But how should he know?  It was busy.  And Ernest Lemming was someone who would lie about absolutely anything for the right price or to keep himself out of trouble.  He had done it before.  He was probably even being threatened by someone because they themselves were the ones responsible.   “A frame-up?” the prosecutor had asked.  “Yeah, that’s what he’s saying.”   “An expert job of one if it is.”  So they then asked Sally Murdoch if there actually were any plans to have Samuel Becker on her show, and she said that there might have been, but it’s nothing she and Larry ever really discussed, not without there already being an actual plan for the person to appear, like on a specific date.  With no one and nothing else to corroborate Samuel Becker, and with no evidence to support his claim of innocence, they would be charging him with first-degree murder in the death of Larry Wiseman.  Until then, he was in a cell at the remand centre four blocks from the Twining Street police station.  Up to the time of the charges being filed by the prosecutor’s office, it had been 60 hours and four minutes since the call had been made to emergency services to report the discovery of Larry Wiseman’s body.  The whole investigation had taken 57 hours and ten minutes from Detectives White and Smith’s arrival at the scene.  “Why did he go to such trouble to dump the body there though?  And why did he wait until the next morning, when someone could have seen him?”  Detective Smith had asked Detective White this. “Yeah,” Detective White said, “And who helped him dump it?”  “Sure beats us, doesn’t it?” Detective Smith then said, “Maybe he had to wait, to wait until he had a way to move it.  Probably guys from his crew helped him.  Maybe they hired a truck, which they couldn’t get until the next day.  Dumping the victim’s body at his work was a good idea though, you have to admit.  Might have thrown us off.  If not for that warranty card, and the fact the watch was missing….He definitely had help though.  Someone’s got a guilty conscience”  “Yeah.  Maybe.  You’re definitely right about him having help though.  He isn’t admitting to anything, so why would he tell us anything like that?”  “Well, let’s consider this one closed then, partner.”  “I’m with you there.  Although does he really seem the type to you?  First-degree murder?  But anyways, suddenly, my friend, I’m feeling hungry again.  And that’s a good thing for me.  I haven’t felt like eating anything since first meeting Larry Wiseman.”

One couldn’t really know, could one?  When one had finally, actually, arrived, not until the place was not that at which one ever could have expected arrival to be discovered, to be realized, even though the place was one that you had always known about, one that you had even been before, had always seen, had even always been curious about or suspicious of, and where you had always seen others but had felt all along, somehow without realizing, that you had never really been there yourself, not the way, not how, you had always suspected, suspected without actually knowing, that others had been and could be there.  It had always been there in the back of your mind, but it also wasn’t, not really, not until you, you yourself, were truly, really there, for the first time and for real, and from then on, it was all around you, where you truly were and could now be, and where forever truly you could always be.
It was the first time in her career, really.   The first time really for real.  She never could have thought this to be true, not really, such a cliché, no?  Until now—until it actually happened to her.  She had succeeded before, but never like this.  This wasn’t simply success—this was the realization of frickin’ destiny, destiny itself, for one never could have planned or even dreamt being somewhere like destiny.  But she took her seat there at the table, at what was now to be her own table, there at The Gris-Gris Club (who would have ever thought, of all places, The Gris-Gris Club?), and she spoke into the microphone, almost feeling that it could be the first time all over again, that this was something like a brand-new spring.  It was as though the harvest of herself could actually really happen, now happen for real.
“Hi, all.  Dora Lynn O’Grady with you again.  And folks, I have arrived.  Arrived here.  At The Gris-Gris Club.  Yep, I’ll be broadcasting from here myself once a week, and occasionally joining the man, the legend, Drew Shepherd.  I’ll be hosting my own guests here, doing my usual thing, it’s true.  But also, Drew and I will be discussing events that are going to be happening around the city, plugging brilliant people and awesome experiences for you all to have and to share.   But let’s get to today’s business, shall we?   Some new bonds are becoming available, and we’ll discuss how these bonds compare to other bonds of the past and even to bonds in other countries all around the world.  I’ll also be looking at the new tech companies that are cropping up from new AI technologies, going over what these technologies actually are and what to look for when a company takes itself public for your investment. So let’s start shall we?  This gumbo is ready to be served and enjoyed.”

…

It wasn’t supposed to be just another day for Tito Lorenzo.  It was supposed to be something else, a day in which he learned something else, something more, about who had killed Larry Wiseman.  And then?  He would bring it together with everything else he knew and maybe he would be somewhere else tomorrow and make the discovery he needed to make to learn the complete truth, maybe even be in a position to make an arrest against the guilty party.  He was supposed to be the person who brought justice home.  True justice.  Meaningful justice.  But today wasn’t like that.  Not at all.  It couldn’t even feel that way.  It was just another day.   Another day like all the other days as a police officer.  That’s how it felt because that’s what it was.
He didn’t feel relieved that it was no longer up to him, but he also felt proud of the detectives who had closed the case in just over two days.  Yeah, Detectives Smith and White were both good police—they did good work.  But now Tito found himself surprised, and he even felt a little foolish, that he had felt like getting involved in this one.  A robbery-murder?  That’s it?!?   But all it takes is hatred for your victim and a lot of anger, maybe a motive, (but not always, and yet, there was likely a motive here) and then the instigating factor, the spark, that would combine with the fuel of all that combustive emotion that would then explode and result in a man being killed.  Sometimes the act of murder was cold.  Sometimes it was hot.  But that didn’t always matter that much in the picture of what happened.  It didn’t always matter to solving a crime.  All you needed was evidence, and well, it didn’t make sense did it, for the victim to have been seen wearing the watch on the day he was murdered and for the accused to say that he had purchased it a week earlier?  The witness was credible, credible enough for them all to now actually believe the other, non-credible, witness who saw Larry Wiseman and Samuel Becker together on the night Larry Wiseman was killed.   You don’t ever get 100 percent proof, but Tito had to admit that they had enough.  Why?  Because if everything that happened actually went down that way, the way the evidence had led them to believe it had, if all the elements involved went together exactly like that, then that’s the only way possible that the case can go down, the only possible order of all the things known, right?  Right.  Good work, guys.  I guess I started out wrong on this one, and if you hadn’t solved it, I would have ended up wrong too–and maybe, probably, everything else would have ended up all wrong also.  Nicely done.  I guess I’m still learning this job.
So, yeah, Tito was now going around all the neighbourhoods where cyclists were riding without helmets and scooterists were scootering on the sidewalk, also without helmets, and Tito was giving out tickets like candy.  He wasn’t the only one who needed to learn a thing or two about being more careful, especially when a person feels that they can be more confident than they would ever think others can afford to be.   So this was one way a police officer could actually make the world a safer place, no?

Since she and Tony had broken up, Helen realized she had never ever in her life actually really thought about being single.  She had been single, occasionally, briefly, but at these times, she had never really thought about what it was actually like and whether it was something that she herself might actually prefer.  Instead, she had seen men and boys and had thought about the next person she wanted to be with, what he would be like.  So what was wrong with that?   Well, who had she been really, and what had been her world, at those times?  She would have been unaware, no?  Not really in touch with herself in the world the way it, or she, actually was, not making sense of what was actually different, better, or not as good about it at that time, for her or for who she might actually be.  How had she never actually, seriously, thought about it before?  Why hadn’t she?  Was it not something she wanted, not something she needed, to actually think about in her own terms as to whether it was good, bad, or something she could get used to and actually really benefit or learn from?  What if she actually had needed to be single?  Was that only for just then?  Or was that who she needed to be to be the person she truly wanted, needed, to become?   She had never even once considered it before, much less really felt it, experienced it, thought about it truly so she might make that one decision her very own, about being with someone in a serious relationship again.  Had she not been strong enough before?  No, she had been strong enough.  It wasn’t that.
Well, somehow, now that she and Tony were finished, were finished as a couple, she had realized this.  After Tony, she was somehow now ready.  Ready to realize this and to think about it.  That was it, was it not?  That she hadn’t been ready?  One thing was certain: “After Tony” she felt very different than the person she had been “before Tony.”
Lorraine was going away for two months, so that meant that Helen would be working for Dora Lynn O’Grady until Lorraine returned, at which point someone new would be brought on for Dora Lynn.  Dora Lynn was originally from Elfman Wares and Tides and Helen had met Dora Lynn only a few times since the merger.  Helen had listened to Dora Lynn’s broadcasts only a few times before the change was to be made.  Dora Lynn did financial and political analysis linking the two lines of incidence to provide insight into what was going on that might affect national and regional economies.  Part of the change meant moving offices, from what was formerly the Prizers building to what was formerly the Elfman Wares and Tides space and was now the Prizers-Elfman building downtown.  The Prizers building would soon also be renamed, but Helen couldn’t understand why, if Dora Lynn had been promoted as Helen believed, Dora Lynn was being officed in that musty old building, along with Drew Shepherd and a few other Prizers elite.  They had actually moved Drew Shepherd there from the Prizers building.  She didn’t think it was because of the downtown location, but maybe that was exactly what it was.  But one would think that the more attractive, comfortable, and well-ventilated space in the Prizers building would be where they would office the elites.  Instead, everyone else was in the newer, glitzier Prizers building and four or five illustrious broadcasters had that older building all to themselves.  Maybe she would find out the reason for this.
It was true that Tony had ended things with her, but Helen was now glad for this.  It was the right thing for them.  Would she have ended things if Tony hadn’t?  She suspected that Tony thought she might have.  Was that why he had ended things?  No, he had told her why.  Because he didn’t think that he could give her the life that she would one day expect to have.  They were too different, she and Tony, he had said.  At first, she had thought that was just self-pity, and she went red from anger.  She felt like slapping him.  But then he broke up with her, just like that, and she then felt truly sad for him.  She realized that she had never considered the fact that she would want things he couldn’t give her.  Did he feel inadequate?  Did this make him feel inadequate?  It was so sad.  Sad but noble.  It was even kind of him to release her from himself once he was feeling this way, maybe even knowing some other things about himself.  She even thought he actually would be better off if he only had himself to look after.  He had learned something true about our world, about the world as something you couldn’t change, almost like what she was now considering.  In today’s world, people like them, like her and Tony, might actually be better off alone.

Tony was taking in the view out the third-story window when he started hearing them—the words he had known were coming for quite some time.  He could feel them.  Were they what he had expected to feel?  Impossible to know.  Doris seemed not to be of the mind that he had to quit everything, quit on broadcasting altogether, because, she was saying, this might only be temporary.  “So I’ll be assisting Drew Shepherd.”  Tony sounded a little brusque, impatient.  “Yes.  Yes.  It’s just that—well, Tony, there has to be some reshuffling and your work is good, but it is not exceptional enough to keep you on air in lieu of other broadcasters.  It could happen that there will be an opening again, but you should still broadcast.  Somewhere.  I just…don’t know where….Do you have any connections with any other agencies?”   That was a blow that was hard to take.  That question.  The view out the window became something that he was no longer seeing at all, but that seemed to waver, seemed, actually, to obstruct, between himself and somewhere else he’d rather be.  Then it seemed to be something that he wanted to punch.  He wanted to punch the sky and make it bleed.  “So I can keep broadcasting.  Somewhere else.  And still assist Drew Shepherd.  At Prizers-Elfman.”  “Yes, I’ve gotten them to agree with that.  I didn’t have to, Tony.  I didn’t have to.  I thought of you.  I know how much you need to broadcast.   I know how it helps you.”  Tony sighed.  Sighed instead of vomiting right then and there.  He really should thank her.  “Okay, Doris.  Thank you.  Thank you very much for knowing me so well.  And…for considering me.”  “You’re welcome, Tony.  Keep broadcasting.  Find somewhere else.  Or go independent.  This isn’t forever, you know.”  And then it hit him.  It really hit him.  So he just asked it: “What about us?  Doris?”  “Well?  What do you think?  What do you need me for?”  He couldn’t bear to ask her what she needed him for.  “So.  We’re finished too.”  “Tony.  It’s temporary.  I’m going to keep listening to your broadcasts and I’m going to try to find a place for you.  You’re a good person, Tony.  You’re good.  You’re honest.  It’s just, everything’s changing again and honest people can’t compete.”   Tony was actually, really and truly, alone in the world.

Drew Shepherd looked at the list of names on his webpage, the names of people he had interviewed and hosted.  Bill Clarkson.  Mark Bedford and the Rainmakers.  Trent Norwood of Norwood and the Stickmen.  Gabby Fox.  Liz Campbell.  It was an impressive list.  And there would be more.  But it was laundry day and his assistant had suddenly quit.  They had promised him a new assistant but he wouldn’t be starting for a couple of days.  Still, Drew looked at the names and he wondered who among them had only agreed to be interviewed on his show for the publicity, or, more to the point, who among them actually looked upon Drew as the unsavoury figure Drew now knew himself to be, so that they would not have appeared on his show if it hadn’t been for their own popularity.  His assistant had called him that, an “unsavoury figure” before he had quit.  Did it matter?  Drew had always felt nothing, but still, this had always bothered him, disturbed him even.  Feeling nothing about being unsavoury.  Of course, Drew was hungover, so he presently, entirely, agreed with his assistant.  But wait a couple of days, a voice in Drew’s head said apropos the Drew Shepherd in his chair.  Wait a couple of days and you will be doing it all over again, not regretting anything.   Drew’s hangovers tended to be bad.  And it was laundry day.  Laundry day with a hangover and no assistant.  So Drew sat in his recliner in his apartment, looked at his webpage, and tried to think of who would appear next on his show.  That should make him feel better, no?  He couldn’t do anything else on a day like today.  And there was next to nothing in his fridge.  Usually people asked, kindly asked, to appear on Drew’s show.  But those people Drew usually turned down.  Were there any awards coming up?  Yes, that was the next question.  So Drew did a search and there were several venues in cities hosting awards ceremonies.  It was autumn, after all.  Who was expected to win?
That was at 10:30 in the morning.  By one o’clock, Drew had showered and shaved.  He had made himself banana and peanut butter sandwiches on white bread with the outside buttered, which he had fried in a frying pan.  He wished he could have eaten them with a glass of milk, but Les hadn’t got to the store the other day.  It was time to do his laundry.  Yes, it was time. When he got to the laundry room, he saw that all of the machines were already in use.  That meant he would have to wait—how long?   Seventeen minutes—several machines would be finished at that time.  He thought of going for a walk around the block but all he could think of was that his new assistant, the guy taking over for Les, had been a broadcaster himself and probably Drew should at least listen to a few of his broadcasts.  They said that his work was sometimes confessional, that it was about young male experience in a cultural conflict zone.  He hadn’t won any awards, of course.  Unlike Dora Lynn.  She had won a Best New Broadcaster award several years before with her agency of then, Gustling Street.  What had she done to deserve her promotion?  She had told a small lie.  Yes, this Drew knew.  But that small lie had meant that someone would go to jail.  Would she be hungover today too?  He realized he had left the building and was on Evraz Street.  Where was he going?  He was just walking.  She had told him everything.  Because he told her that she could, that she should.  Because he already knew, he said.  She didn’t know who had actually been involved.  Drew knew.  She knew now too.  It was Leonard Rex’s son.  Shane.  Shane Rex.  That’s who had killed Larry Wiseman.  Larry had made the mistake of telling Shane Rex’s girl to leave him, that Shane was no good for her.  She was thinking about actually doing exactly that.  So Shane had killed Larry.  In a drunken, infantile rage.  That’s what Drew knew and Dora Lynn hadn’t.  When she had lied, she hadn’t known what really had happened.  Well, now she did.  So, how did she feel about all that?
Drew still felt like he had gone twelve rounds with a gorilla.  But then on Fifth Street: Les Moore his name had been, my fearless, previous assistant.  Yesh, something like that, like “Les Moore,” was funny in those days but now it only disturbed Drew.  Do people ask you if it’s short for Lester?  Sigh.  All the time.  And if they don’t, then they probably ask what I just asked.  Les had laughed then, his glance cast down and away.  That sad body language.  And now Drew remembered what he hadn’t really noticed then.  What he had only felt but not known.  It was a sad person’s laughter.  Yeah, Les Moore was one of those guys with a good soul, a soul that meant he had to be good.  Les had no choice.  Drew used to think guys like that were suckers.  Until Les.  It was still sad though.  Les felt things from the world, about the world, about the world as a whole, about the world as a “living soul.”  The world is so….It’s all so….Why is everything so….That had been Les.  And now?  Sigh.  What people had to deal with simply for showing up, simply for being born.  Les Moore.  Drew had known of a guy named Daley Seaman.  Yes.  Daley Seamen.  Drew didn’t even ask Les what he would do, what his plans were.  Okay, Les, have it your way, Drew had said.  I doubt you’ll miss it.  Then Les sort of looked away and shook his head.  Did Drew still feel bad now?  Why did he feel angry instead?  Because he was an angry person, had been since he had been eleven years old, when—there was nothing for him to say about it anymore.  It seemed that since that time everyone else had said everything, everything about everything, and he didn’t agree with any of it.
Now that he was feeling a bit better, he thought it when he was crossing along Fifth Street and Hill Avenue: Les knew things.  What should Drew do about this?  Apparently, Les didn’t care anymore.  So what, then?  The cocaine, the women, the young wannabes, the young pretenders.  The winners, the also-rans, and all the tales money could make known, make public, and make people say they believed, even stand for.  What currency really was was ice or fire.  You could burn someone, you could ice someone.  That was it.  But that was all that mattered in today’s world.  Several people had ended up dead.  They never saw it coming.  What did it matter?  At least assisting in all of this, at least assisting Drew in the industry that was the only monolith that actually mattered in today’s culture, at least all of it had maybe weakened Les enough so that he wouldn’t ever start, wouldn’t ever begin, wouldn’t ever begin talking about anything that he had seen.  Or heard.  Les Moore.  Less is more.  No, he wouldn’t talk.  Yeah, Drew now actually felt bad for Les—he wouldn’t talk because he knew there was no point anymore in getting personally involved, no point in making anything personal for himself or humanity anymore.  No reason would be good enough.
By six o’clock, Drew was enjoying soaking in the tub.  He’d ordered in a sandwich which sat on his kitchen counter.  After about ten minutes, his phone rang.  “Drew Shepherd,” he said.  “Drew, it’s Michael Guest.  How the hell are ya?”  “I’m well, Michael.  What can I do for you.”  “Well, it’s about a possible guest for your show.  A guest and a live performance at Gris-Gris.  Gram York is up for a Colliers Award this year.  Now, he hasn’t won, but his chances are very good.  What do you say about him appearing on your show and then doing a couple sets afterwards.”  What could Drew say, right?  “I’d say that sounds like something we’re going to have to get right onto.  When is the award being announced?”  The only thing better than having a prize-winner on your show, was having a prize-winner on your show just before it was announced that they had won.  “This Friday.  In the afternoon.  What about having him on on Wednesday.”  “I can do that.  That slot’s available for him.”  “Great.  What are you busy doing anyway?”  “I’m just soaking in the tub.”  “Oh, that’s great.  Well, enjoy your soak.  I’ll tell Gram the good news he’s been waiting so patiently to hear.”  “I look forward to seeing him again.”  And with that, Drew rang off, the morning’s hangover behind him, and he felt the week to come could now perhaps be the same as every other week.  He felt ready again, ready for it, ready to do exactly as he had always done, but what did everything else he had ever thought on Mondays like this one actually really mean?  Did any of it mean anything at all?  Would it ever?  The following day he would meet his new assistant, and he wondered if, like Les Moore, this new guy would be sad enough to have given up on what everyone else believed about their world, their world of meaning, at least as far as popular culture and artistic expression was concerned.  Drew had once believed in all that too, when he was young and didn’t really know anything.  And now he actually, and only, stood for it, represented it.  And representing something was not nearly the same thing as actually being there and believing, and assisting someone who represented it had to be like being someone who had entirely given up on both, on actually being there and believing and on representing being there for those who could still actually believe.

Nights at The Gris-Gris Club were what Dora Lynn liked to call “tax-free.”  They were more than that though, more like “free lunches,” because she seldom paid for anything she ate or drank, and the people there insisted that she not ever worry about finding a way to get herself home at the end of the night.  They hired drivers or cabs for her even though she had her assistant in Helen Wisk, and soon she and Helen would arrive by cab because leaving one’s car over night at The Gris-Gris Club was known as “bad luck,” or so people said.  They wanted her to feel looked after so the people would keep mixing, advertisers would keep appearing with their wares, and the cash would keep flowing.
Dora Lynn knew Drew Shepherd’s new assistant, Tony.  Tony lived in Dora Lynn’s building.  It turned out that Helen had lived with Tony for a time, but they were no longer together.  It was also true that Tony, who, like Dora Lynn, had originally been with Elfman Wares and Tides, had recently been dropped as a broadcaster, as his rather impressionistic, occasionally experimental, and at times confessional approach had not been a fit for Prizers-Elfman since the merger.  So the four of them, Drew, Tony, Dora Lynn, and Helen, were having to become something like friends beyond any previous association or connection to one another.  Dora Lynn still recalled, now with something like sentimental fondness, the night that Tony had appeared in their building drunk, and how they, the two of them, Dora Lynn and Tony, then rode up in the elevator together.  Strangely, or so it now seemed, Dora Lynn had wondered around that time whether she herself might end up with someone like Tony.  He seemed, even in that state, no, especially in that state, to be so thoughtful, so considerate of others.  Tony was the kind of person who took things seriously enough to seem like he would one day maybe take on the responsibility of caring for a woman and children.  That was the sense in which Dora Lynn had wondered then about Tony with respect to herself, whether she would ever be someone who would have a family.  With someone like him?  Anyway, Tony had seemed like he could possibly, one day, become a family man.  Dora Lynn had asked Helen what Tony was like as a partner.  “Oh, well, he’s just Tony.  He just does things the way he does them.  He does almost everything his own way.”  “He seems serious.  To me anyway.”  “Oh, yeah, well, he is serious.  He doesn’t really suffer any fools and he doesn’t really like leaving anything up to chance.”  That seemed like Tony, but Tony also didn’t really seem the type to be someone like Drew’s assistant.  Tony actually seemed too head-strong.  Dora Lynn knew of course that assisting Drew hadn’t been Tony’s choice.  Still, Drew and Tony appeared to be getting along fine, although Drew himself told Dora Lynn that Tony probably wouldn’t last if that became something up to Tony himself.  Meanwhile, Dora Lynn had Helen for a couple of months until Lorraine Gamble returned from her time off.  Helen was a quick learner and someone who did everything the way she was supposed to, which made perfect sense because that’s how assistants were supposed to be.
To Dora Lynn, the four of them seemed to possess a curious affinity together, and this was not something planned or designed, or even intentional, but rather it was because of who they all were in some vague sense of being independent-minded people who had been placed into roles requiring that they share an affinity together.  To Dora Lynn’s mind, this was something that made her nervous, because, as someone who was unrepentantly materialistic and who sought the most sure and concrete means to her own ends possible, any real and true human connection, any instance of which, was not something that could be broken down beyond being whatever it would be for the people who were actually involved in it.  Undoubtedly, Dora Lynn was sensing that, in spite of their no longer being a couple, Tony and Helen’s connection was stronger than any other connection amongst the four of them.  And it would be what was impossible to see in the nature of that connection, which not even Tony and Helen themselves could have actually known, that would have the power to dissolve the ties of money, power, and influence that had established and now maintained the order of people and things at Prizers-Elfman.

Edgar Eagleton knew more than most kids who had dads in the business, and he knew enough never to look down on people who came from respectable means.  And that wasn’t only because some of them were his clients or because they tended to need him in just the ways they did or would.  The differences that he could see between his own livelihood and that of the people he had known growing up actually had everything to do with one’s own parents’ occupation and less to do with the money one would have access to that allowed one to get something like higher education or to have connections enabling one someday to be possessed of one’s own legitimate means.  The fact was, Edgar actually got along better with the kids from respected and well-off families than with some of the kids from his own set.  This was not only because the kids in his own set tended to be jealous and might try to take liberties with Edgar, and it wasn’t simply because those other kids from respected families were better raised than most of the kids in Edgar’s set, but because of what there was on Edgar’s own side, because Edgar’s dad was someone people had to know to respect from fear and out of appreciation for the order of things in the city’s underworld.  It seemed the kids from respected families somehow understood this (and yet, how did they know?) and because of this, they never started things with Edgar.  They simply understood and actually were accepting of Edgar instead.  Maybe they could even use Edgar.  Darcy Eagleton’s place in the order allowed Edgar then to move among different crowds without too much difficulty, without having to worry about being, or even seeming to be, too far out of his element.  It was only those supposedly of his own kind, yes, the people of his own set, whom Edgar had to worry about keeping checked and in their place.  He did this in several ways: by recruiting them onto his side and subordinating them, by subjugating their assets to his own and then isolating and neutralizing them in their productivity or mobility, by underselling them and then isolating and neutralizing them in their productivity or mobility, or, as was sometimes necessary, by simply destroying them, their productivity, or their mobility in one way or another.
The circuit was anyone’s though, anyone’s who was there, or that had always been the understanding.  That had always been the understanding but it was becoming less and less the actual reality.  It was supposed to be that one worked the clubs and the bars, the parties and the after parties, in the way one worked one’s own neighbourhood streets, and if you ran into someone who was trying to do business, then you simply moved on and got to your next position.  It was more about people you knew, people who counted on you and could respect you, than about where you could do business.  Edgar knew a lot of people in the “waves pool,” which is to say he knew a lot of people in the trends and influencing scene, but he was one among several people at this time who had developed a reputation for his own availability and products.  There was an understanding that there would be enough business for everyone for the foreseeable future, but the merger between the two biggest companies meant that most of the business was now going to be localized in one club, The Gris-Gris Club.  After the murder of one of the managers at the second-biggest of the two companies, which was not something even connected to business, the person responsible, Shane Rex, had protected himself by getting his own dad to consolidate his connections so that Edgar’s own dad, Darcy Eagleton, actually had had to get involved.  This really infuriated Edgar because his hands were being tied deliberately by someone for whom Edgar had little if any respect, someone who was actually trying to change the rules of their game in his own favour.  This also meant that Edgar himself didn’t have a choice but to go along with the play against the investigation (and, of course, Edgar would have liked to see Shane put out of the game at just that time).  Furthermore, Edgar was actually choked that the play on the investigation had succeeded better than anyone could have expected.  No one suspected a thing.  But now, it was true, Shane Rex wanted complete, and almost exclusive, access to The Gris-Gris Club, which was more than irritating for Edgar, because Shane was undeserving of anything like this for so many reasons.  Shane’s dad, Leonard, was who he was though, no?  So as Edgar sat at his table at The Smiling Monkey, musing on how much deader that club now was than in the past, getting ready to finish up there so that he could head over to The Gris-Gris Club where it would be much busier, much livelier and more profitable, he looked at his security team and realized that they had been one man short, the man who had been the lynch pin in Edgar’s own operation, Manny Weathers.  Where had he gone?  Edgar knew very well.  He was switching over to Shane’s side, was he not?  Well, Edgar knew that he had been ordered to.  Shane’s dad, Leonard Rex, had given Manny, with his connections to city police, the order to look after Shane from now on, so the play would soon be to isolate and eliminate Edgar Eagleton.  Edgar still had three guys in his security detail, low-level guys none of whom had the cachet within the force that Manny Weathers still had, but Manny Weathers hadn’t yet appeared publicly for Shane.  Was Manny simply waiting for Edgar to make his own move so that things among all of them, among Manny’s guys and himself, could remain natural, smooth, and transparent?  Manny wanted all the bad blood out of the way before getting himself involved in a transition, did he not?  Manny wanted nothing to do with things between Edgar Eagleton and Shane Rex.  So if Edgar was going to act, he’d have to act that very night.

It was all set to happen after the evening’s official activities had ended.  The Gris-Gris Club would host an after-party, someone that was making waves in the wave pool.  But someone on Edgar’s team had had eyes on Edgar for some time, aware as they were that he would make his move against Shane Rex that night.  That same member of his team had alerted Darcy “The Devil” Eagleton several days previous who, fearing for his son’s life or freedom, had told the police everything.  So when the plan was about to come to a head, when Shane had gone outside to cut a deal with someone Edgar had paid to set up Shane under the appearance of being someone who wanted things to be done discreetly, the eyes followed Edgar and his people outside, at which point, when Edgar and his crew were about to attack, they were swarmed by police who were watching the whole thing from the Gris-Gris parking lot.  Darcy Eagleton appeared then and told his son everything, that Shane Rex was now going to be questioned about the murder.  Among the police that night who intervened was Tito Lorenzo.  And who should come over to Tito, who should recognize Tito from the night of the merger party, when he was taking photos through the Performing Arts Centre’s front window?  “I have something to show you,” Helen Wisk said to Tito. “I didn’t know who among the police I can trust.  It’s about the murder of Larry Wiseman.”  She opened a photograph on her phone.  It was a photograph that was taken several days before the murder, and it showed Samuel Becker wearing a watch that looked exactly like the Rolex which they had accused him of stealing from Larry Wiseman before murdering him.  “Where did you get this photo from?” Tito asked Helen.  “From Shane Rex’s girlfriend.  My boss, Dora Lynn O’Grady, lied to you all.  Samuel Becker is innocent.”
So, like on the morning after she had first seen the body of Larry Wiseman and called emergency services, when Helen had just made the discovery of somewhere that existed throughout all the universe that was “between spaces,” “between places,” somewhere that was not only an actual place and space, but also a state of being of and in everything and of and in everywhere that could exist, Helen sat in the squad car and gave her statement to Officer Tito Lorenzo.  It turned out that Larry Wiseman’s advice to Shane Rex’s girlfriend, Renée Davis, to leave Shane Rex because he was no good for her was not something she wanted to ignore, so that when she came into possession of the photograph that was going around showing Samuel Becker wearing the watch, she knew that, to be free of Shane, to see him convicted of the crime that he had committed, she would have to clear Samuel Becker of the crime.  “How do you know that it was Renée Davis who shared the photo?  Who shared it with you?”  “The person who shared it with me wanted me to assist  them in blackmailing Dora Lynn with it.  They shared it anonymously but told me that the photo was their own.  I only found out later from Tony Proctor, my ex-partner, that it was actually Renée who was sharing it, showing it around, hoping that someone would come forward with it.  She was obviously afraid of coming forward herself because of who Shane Rex was.  Tony got a copy too.  No one wanted to come forward, probably not until it was safe.”
That was the statement from Helen Wisk that was given to Tito Lorenzo.  Renée Davis would later confirm that she had shared the photo and that she had got the photo from someone else.   The photo had been taken six days before the murder of Larry Wiseman and it shows Samuel Becker proudly wearing the Rolex that Larry had sold him that evening.  What was not in Helen’s statement was what had given her the courage she needed to come forward with the photograph and her statement to Tito.  Her time with Tony Proctor had taught her something like “independent spiritedness” and the conviction to be the person she was finding she wanted and needed to be, and furthermore, from her time with Tony, she had become tired of assisting others who were weak, corrupt, self-serving and did harm to other people and society.  Moreover, seeing Tony assisting someone like Drew Shepherd, who she knew would have a very bad effect on Tony, was something she found hard to accept for Tony.  Tony losing his opportunity to broadcast in syndication was very disappointing for her, because Tony was good and could reach people with what was genuine thoughtful content.  Tony was right.  Most males are conflicted—the culture for them is a conflict zone.  Helen understood that Tony could be part of a solution to the problems she had been seeing for as long as she had been in the broadcasting industry, a solution that she had learned was very badly needed.  It wasn’t fair that Dora Lynn got promoted and Tony was demoted, especially when Helen came across the information that, to succeed in this, Dora Lynn had lied for certain connected and influential people.  Under Dora Lynn, Helen had quickly become aware of the illegal activity that she had long suspected was common-place around The Gris-Gris Club and within the order of people and things at Prizers, now Prizers-Elfman.  So when she finally had the opportunity to approach a police officer she knew she could trust—up until that time came, having known very well that there were police connected to the organized criminal network across the circuits and amongst all the people that formed what everyone called “the wave pool”–she then did so, that police officer happening to be the officer she knew for certain had been actually working the case on the side of official law enforcement from the beginning.
Helen was from that moment on then no longer someone “between spaces,” no longer a being suspended “between places,” but, after her statement was given, she would feel fully situated in her own place, in her own reality.  Enacting her own courage to help Tony, whom she would call later that evening to share everything with him, had been what she needed to do to seize the chance to “be her own boss,” to claim her life as her very own.  What had it been about Tony that had set her upon this course, that had instilled in her this new condition of having to make her own choices for her self?   It was simply that he didn’t lie to himself or to others—he was entirely incapable of not telling the truth or living by what he felt and could know was needed to be completely true and perhaps, one day, free.  She had never met anyone like that before, she now understood.  This, Helen realized, meant that life with Tony had been something that meant something utterly real and true to Helen, and that from this, life itself had come to be something whose meaning could truly form a living essence in and of oneself.  People shouldn’t compromise with their truth, with their known reality, of who they are, because to do so is to compromise with who they actually are being or becoming.  To lie, to be dishonest with oneself or others, with respect to this essence in oneself, will mean being and becoming someone other than the person one will ultimately, at one time or another, need to be or to become to realize a greater reality than what one can possibly know at any given time.