The Third Part of Chapter 5: Yes!

James and Clarissa went inside on the pretext of going to the washroom. Actually, James had said he needed to go, and then motioned for Clarissa to follow. James had butterflies in his stomach due to the true purpose of this trip; he had convinced Clarissa to go with him on some flimsy pretext of “attending to his needs,” which she took at face value for the naughty behaviour best performed in private that it suggested. Once inside, he revealed the true purpose of this trip: James went down on one knee and proposed to Clarissa. Clarissa gasped.

“Of course I want to marry you! It’s such a beautiful ring!”She exclaimed, beaming.

With Clarissa’s reaction, James was glad. He stood up; they kissed, and then went outside after lingering for a little while indoors, to witness the antics of Belinda, who was now stumbling towards David. The Vanetti’s baby son Jason was visible, crying behind her while clutching his hand; David did not look pleased.

“Belinda,” said he, curtly.

“Hey Davey, did I ever tell you what a good cook you are?” her words were quite slurred.

“Actually, Pia made the salads,” he responded, looking with disdain at the wine stain on her dress.

“Oh yeah, my compliments to the chef, hic!”

Belinda poured another glass of wine, and then, seemingly forgetting that she had done so, fetched a Bacardi Breezer (orange flavour) from the cooler, thus being the first person to double-fist at a garden party. Unhappily, her manners seemed to desert her with increasing inebriation. She consumed the wine first, not in sips, as people would do in polite company and making conversation all the while, but in gulps, with no chatting in between. Jeannine and Rick were both watching her from their respective vantage points on the veranda and beside the koi pond, and both of them were wearing looks of pity. Rick lived near James’s parents, while Jeannine had an elegant old house east of Bank Street.

I hope she changes direction; I would like to see her dry rather than in the koi pond, thought Rick. It was too bad that she was not dry in another sense of the expression.

At this point, Belinda’s thoughts were fuzzy; she was feeling a vague feeling of contentment through her dizziness.

“I must say, Davey, you look much better after I’ve had a bottle of this good stuff,”
David heard that as “I nussay, avy, woo much better affer I had a butt of thizz gudd suff,”

David turned around and tried to start a conversation with Kevin, not wanting to spend any more time entertaining his wife’s drunken friend.

“So, Kevin, are you having a nice evening?”

“Yes, thank you. Your wife’s salad was particularly good, and I quite liked the punch,”

“That’s wonderful,”

“Say, who’s the drunk?” asked Kevin; he knew perfectly well that the drunk was Belinda, but he feigned ignorance. It was true that he had had almost as much to drink as Belinda, but as he was much taller and larger, due to muscle mass rather than fat, he was holding up much better, and while at least a bit tipsy, was not making an ass of himself.

“She’s one of my wife’s friends, who will not remain so much longer, by the looks of it,”

Belinda was thinking, my, I’m tired after all this booze. Maybe I’d better go home and sleep. Oh, there’s Kevin. My, what a piece of man, thought she, eyeing his posterior. He looks so much finer than Kale. What was I thinking marrying that piece of wood? It was unfortunate that she did not just think the last part. That she also spoke rather loudly meant that several other people heard this detail; not everyone wanted enlightenment to this window on her thoughts.

David looked at Belinda one final time and his lip curled as she stumbled toward the gate. What will Eunice think when I tell her? She is one of her close friends, for reasons understood only to Eunice. He also disagreed very much with Belinda on her assessment of Kale. She thought him a rather pleasant man, and was unhappy that he had moved to Calgary after the divorce rather than Belinda. She reminded him of a more unpleasant version of the Prime Minister’s Wife, Francisca Cathaline Gutzmann-Meach; Cathaline was indifferent, like a cat, but Belinda was worse than indifferent toward her husband; she was antipathetic, not showing any thanks for his providing for her, demanding gifts for love in a most unsavoury manner, and generally was an unkind person with stormy friendships; given this, it was no wonder that Kale divorced her. She resembled his cousin Viola in this regard, who had divorced some man named Ken, with Ken getting custody of the children. It was a tragedy this way: Viola estranged herself from her daughters, while Ken had to struggle with being a single father. Even though he had never met Ken, he still felt sorry for him at times. This was three years ago, however, and was yesterday’s drama, so to speak. The political drama on Parliament Hill and 24 Sussex Drive was much more interesting, mainly because all the people involved were incredibly wily politicians, which stood in contrast to Belinda. There was the revelation that Prime Minister Meach had forced out his predecessor using staff to spread rumours about Colm’s health; there was his wife, who was the very picture of unquestioning devotion to her husband when the cameras were near, who still showed a curious detachment when prying eyes and ears were supposedly looking the other way. In any case, thought David, my vote is with Duff in the next election; the drama is a real distraction, and Duff was a very smooth operator, standing by silently, watching the inevitable collapse of the house of cards.

“James!” Exclaimed David upon seeing the man of the hour, “You look much happier now than when you went into the washroom.” David failed to notice that Clarissa’s hair clip had reversed its direction from its initial position when she had gone inside, and the top two buttons on James’s shirt were undone, which was again not the case when he went inside.

“I should confess that neither of us had to go to the washroom. We’re engaged!”
Clarissa showed David the ring on her finger.

“Clarissa! James! I’m so happy for you both! Did that just happen when you ‘went to the washroom’? It’s not exactly a naughty thing, you know. I could have announced it. In fact, I’ll do that right now. Hey, everybody! May I have your attention! I have just heard from James and Clarissa that they are now engaged.”

The party erupted into applause.

“The wedding will be in August,” called out Clarissa.

“The fifteenth of August,” added James spontaneously. Now we’ll have to make reservations, he thought.

Belinda said to herself, “I was right!” James and Clarissa are getting married! This has to be the major event of the season. I would like to get married myself, again; Kevin’s single, and so what if he says he’s gay? He’s probably just playing hard-to-get.

David thought that this was exciting, and wondered how they were going to plan it. Two months to plan a wedding is rather fast, and Pia and I took nearly six months to plan ours. Have they considered a guest list? Are we on it?

Laura thought that they were moving very fast! Then she went on a fantasy trip in her mind about some handsome man who would arrive to sweep her off her feet.

How excellent of them, Kevin thought; it was so heartening to see friends to fall in love with each other. He had known James through David and Pia, which was why he was at the garden party, and they looked nice together.

Jeannine thought, how lovely! Her thoughts then turned to Belinda, as she really was at a loss as to why the Vanettis had invited her to the garden party.

How wonderful that they’re going to tie the knot, thought Rick as he applauded; I’ve known James for five years, essentially since he moved here, and he’s a very lucky man to be landing this sort of woman. Now, if only that drunk would stop stumbling around, this party improve. James and Clarissa left the garden party and went home to dive into the preliminary stages of wedding planning. The party continued with an even more cheerful atmosphere until 10:15.

At that time Pia said to the last guests, “Listen, I like you very much, but you know, Jason also needs to sleep,”

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The Second Part of Chapter 5: Yes!

At the garden party, the foccacia, which was the first item on the glass-bottomed table, was the first gone, and Pia quickly replaced it with a tray of assorted cheeses: Swiss, havarti, Saint-André, Oka, and Brie.

Laura looked at Belinda. She looks worse than usual, she thought. Normally, for this sort of party, she would be smiling in her way, well made-up, with not a hair out of place. Now, however, she looked somewhat dishevelled, sweaty, and her lustrous cocktail dress––she had a habit of dressing provocatively––had several wrinkles and sweat stains. She was usually up on the latest gossip, which in some respects was nice; who would want to be in the dark about friends? Tonight, however, she had a spritzer before she started talking about people––tonight it was about her ex-husband Kale––and the quality of her gossip was therefore noticeably lacking. She already knew that Belinda thought of Kale as “that asshole”, and she had no particular interest in the factoid that Christine––or whoever, the name was slurred––had planted chrysanthemums. It was additionally unfortunate for her that when she was drunk, she tended to lose control over the volume of her voice. Apart from Belinda’s gossip about Christine, Christine herself was a very nice person; like Belinda, she was single, but unlike Belinda, did not engage in gossip to the extent that it became tasteless or rude; whatever she said about others portrayed them in a good light.

Like Laura, Eunice also thought well of Christine. She kept her home spotlessly clean, seemed to know how to manage her money, and in every way was what a typical woman would strive to be, and could plausibly do so; she was intelligent, had a good job as a teacher, and was sensible in almost every way; all that was missing was a man. Eunice had a friend named Zachary, an accountant with a small firm that did her books, who would be a good match for her; she should introduce them to each other sometime, she thought.

In Laura’s mind, all the news was with James and Clarissa, rather than anybody Belinda was interested in discussing; there was definitely something going on. She could see the pair standing under the arbour, looking doe-eyed at each other. It seemed sappy, and was such a match made in heaven. They were both smart, they were both economists, and they talked each other to death on topics that only they could find interesting. They would probably have a pair of beautiful kids; they were meant for each other, she thought, as she had over the past four months that they had been dating. Something similar had happened between David and Pia three years back, as related to her by the elder Mr. Vanetti at their wedding, though she had also heard that the elder Mr. Vanetti had played matchmaker, something in which he turned out to have prodigious skill. She stared at James and Clarissa longingly, and thought, “I want a man like that.”

“Pardon?” It was Kevin; she hadn’t just thought that. Kevin also watched James and Clarissa as they went inside, giggling and telling each other small jokes.

“Oh, hello Kevin. I didn’t say anything,” said Laura, which left Kevin entirely unconvinced.

“You didn’t say that you wanted a man like James?”

At this point, Belinda butted in, and Kevin could clearly tell she was hammered: “Yes, just like I didn’t say that I was single and longing for partnership. I also neglected to ask you––“

“Sorry, I’m gay.”

“That’s not what I meant,” said Belinda, not entirely taking in what he had said. He’s gay? She thought, well, so am I! It’s a very gay party, after all.

“What I wanted to ask was: are you enjoying this party?”

“Um, yes,” said Kevin, who wished to be talking to someone else just then, to a person like Rick, or Laura before they had been interrupted, for instance; Rick, like himself, was an economist, but unlike him, was a monetarist after the fashion of Milton Friedman; they always had robust debates. He was not at all surprised when Belinda and Kale divorced; the two were very much unlike each other, and he was disappointed that Kale rather than Belinda had moved to Calgary, because he preferred Kale; the good thing about the divorce was that they had harmed no children in the process, as their marriage had been a childless one and, Kevin suspected, sexless. The case was different for his friend Ken, who had just finished a very messy settlement; he had custody of the children, while his ex-wife got the car, which was a Porsche, and thus considered a prize by both of them. They could not agree on the house, which they had to sell, with half the money going to each, while Viola carted off many other possessions, leaving Ken to purchase new furniture; this had been in lieu of them dealing with the divorce amicably. It was a pity about the house: it was a very old and elegant house, a relic from the Victorian era, and a builder quickly snapped it up in a desire for a much more modern house in a cubist fashion. Cubism was nice, but a cubist house would look out of place surrounded by three-storey buildings that had been standing since the 1880s. He also felt for the ex-wife, who was a nice person when not around Ken; they simply disagreed with each other, which they found out too late, only after they had two children, who he thought were unjustly alienated from their mother. He knew all of this due to a close relationship with the man; he lived on Cooper, a block over from Kevin, and the relationship went back to their university days; Ken shared many details with Kevin, though Kevin felt uncomfortable in that some of this information verged closely on gossip, with which he took an ambivalent attitude. His worries were mostly because when gossip spreads around, it looks too much like the game of broken telephone played by schoolchildren.

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The First Part of Chapter 5: Yes!

James and Clarissa had started sleeping together in early May and had grown even closer; they were still in the soppy phase of their love, which had rapidly grown like the plants outside.

Early in the morning of the day after the summer solstice, James was reading the lead story of The Globe and Mail while sipping his coffee before leaving for work, which was a very long article about Cameron Duff, and took the form of an interview by Nia Aitt about his tactics. He liked her interviews, as she was always engaging and got to the point fast, as was the case here.

“I like to think of myself as a calm man, but that may belie what you see on C-SPAN,” says Cameron Duff.

“Those are simply theatrics, as you must understand about our system. I predict that the Prime Minister will not last much longer; his cabinet meetings are basically an elaborate game of chess played against imagined opponents, when he should perhaps be focussing on his real opponents, which include me. It reminds me of a captain steering through the fog and imagining icebergs. The fog is all in his mind, though. My shadow cabinet, on the other hand, is the most united that I have ever seen in parliament, and I have been a parliamentarian for thirty-three years. This united shadow cabinet, our united caucus, the freshness and vitality of our ideas will lead us to victory in the next election, I am confident of that.

“As for the specifics of strategy, I don’t plan one way or another on whether to vote this government down in a confidence measure, but given that this is a minority parliament, and given that there is a lot of room for disagreement, and given the corruption that has been festering these past four years, essentially since Meach took office, I would say there is a fifty-fifty chance that I will decide to pull the plug on this government in the next year. Basically, if they introduce good bills, we’ll vote for them. Saying this keeps the boys, and I use that term well advisedly, on their toes, and on the lookout for any poor behaviour in their ranks. One might think of it as a way of getting what we want. The Bloc and the New Democrats are also supportive of us, and there is a lot of room for agreement; like them, we support Canada’s numerous regions, which is important given that we are a regional country. Our three parties agree that there is some support needed for Canada’s industries to change and become more competitive, although we must always ensure that they remain the best, and not let government support run amok. And of course, like them, we believe that Meach and his cabal have become too complacent and corrupt, which speaks to a larger detachment and alienation from the people who elected them.”

Asked what his ideas were, he responded “Well, we plan to abolish payroll taxes, including Employment Insurance premiums and Canada Pension Plan premiums. There is a lot of talk going around right now about how those are not good ideas and where the money for funding Employment Insurance and the Canada Pension Plan will come from, but those people who advance these ideas forget that these accounts are merely notional; there is no bank vault filled with cash, nor is there a dedicated bank account. The funds can come from general revenue. I also plan to maximise the value of the work contributed by the public service. I think that those are all the promises I can afford to make to you right now, as you know ‘a week is a lifetime in politics’, and anyways, I’m not prime minister…yet. Additionally, I believe that the government punitively taxes wages, which is another reason for my advocacy of the abolition of EI and CPP contributions. When abolished, the cost of labour will become cheaper, and employment will be higher as a result.”

When asked further about corruption, Duff said, “It’s no secret, and I’ll leave it at that; I’m sure it will all come out soon enough, and I shall let you do your job to discover the rot.”

James trailed off from reading, distracted, and pondered the drama, which one might also call a circus, on the Hill. Talking down his opponent, as Duff was doing, was what all politicians do in an adversarial parliamentary system; while some of the footage of question period was amusing, it was entirely predictable. The real drama was in the Prime Minister’s office and home, and had all the characters of a soap opera. There was the indifferent, catlike wife in Cathaline Meach, the authoritarian Prime Minister who attempted to rule his fiefdom, that being his cabinet, with an iron fist, and then there were the rumours of in-cabinet intrigue and infighting. Given that cabinet meetings were secret, almost everyone wanted to know where the leaks were coming from. Some suspected the Minister of Defence, Mopps Sousa, known for making flowery and overwrought speeches that carried no meaning, or the Environment Minister, Beraj Bing-Witt, who was known for long speeches that put one to sleep, and when pundits dissected the meaning of said speeches, they were unable to find any; it was said by many that he was clueless in his portfolio. Others thought some disaffected staffer who felt downtrodden and needed a way to get back at their bosses was to blame. This might not be true, but the media was particularly fond of portraying it in this light. It could still be worse, he thought. At least there was no corruption that he knew of, or at least no evidence of such. The minority government and the raptor-like opposition probing for any sign of weakness are taking care of that.

He flipped to the editorial section, where there was a piece calling for fiscal responsibility and praising the current government for being prudent in this respect. That was when Clarissa joined him for breakfast.

“Hello there, you ready for your day?”

“Of course, Clarie. I’m also ready for tonight’s garden party. I would normally consider those rather boring, but I have a feeling something will go down.”

“So do I; Belinda’s coming, and you know how Belinda and booze get along. I can picture her dancing on tables right now.”

“I was thinking along a different line; you’ll find out,” replied James, finishing his breakfast, which had consisted of bacon, brioche swimming in butter, a coffee, and a glass of milk, of which only crumbs and dregs remained with a spot of grease on a small plate.

For James, work that day consisted of finding a new customer to fill in the hole left by Omega Faucets, which was almost certainly going to go bankrupt, and in work on a number of other files, including Inxton Car Seats and several others. He wondered what the faucet maker’s troubles were, considering he had seen many taps and spigots with the Omega insignia, and they had diversified into toilets and sinks in addition to their usual product line of faucets and showerheads; the company was Colleen’s file, and she was reticent about it due to its impending demise. “Why didn’t they foster customer loyalty?” she muttered to herself.

James went to Hartman’s, just as he did three times a week, to pick up some fruit and olives, and with this obeisance to healthy eating done, he went to the snack aisle for some potato chips, which he ate on the way home. They would be enjoying a light dinner of pasta salad, which had been chilled in the fridge, because they were both going to David’s garden party later that night; he and his wife Pia had reputations as good hosts, and even though they had a son, they had not slowed down, and he was sure they would surpass themselves as usual with the salty foccacia that was Pia’s specialty; he always ended up having four or five slices of that.

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