Easy to Like (23 page)

It occurred to Elliot that this was the
first time Mike had ever terminated a phone call when Elliot arrived for a
scheduled meeting.

“Elliot,” said Mike. His arms were
open, cunt was coming in for a hug. “You look handsome in that suit.”

“Thank you.” Elliot looked down. Yes,
he was always in a suit now.

“I've been in Toronto before, you
know.”

“I didn't.”

“No, neither did I. Blair reminded me.
For the TIFF. I was at that once.”

“The film festival?”

“Yeah . . . but
plane, hotel, screening, reception, dinner, hotel, plane. I coulda been
anywhere. Many positive developments to tell you about, Elliot. Blair, can you
get me a coffee?

“There's coffee in that Thermos,” said
Blair.

“I want a soy latte.”

Blair made a face and left the
trailer.

“I enjoy good news,” Elliott said.

“Lucky Silverman is going to be named
president of the Motion Picture Association of America.”

“Why is that a positive
development?”

“Not directly for you,
but . . . we are all on Lucky's team now. That position,
it's a Washington position, not a Hollywood position. It's got incredible power.
Jack Valenti had more pull than most members of the Reagan cabinet. And, in case
you didn't notice, we're in the middle of a culture war. The enemy has mobilized
their hillbillies, they're coming down from their mountains, we're in deep shit.
We need friends inside the Beltway.”

“By ‘we' you mean the liberal
Hollywood, drugs-and-sodomy-positive crowd?” asked Elliot.”

“Yes.”

“When I left Canada, many years ago,
there was an ambivalence about arts and culture. That's been replaced by open
hostility. The barbarians may have already closed the gate behind them,
Mike.”

“I'm not willing to concede defeat. The
thought of having to live in Europe is too much for me to bear. I'm a patriot,
goddamn it, and my America includes drugs and sodomy. And please don't include
film and television in arts and culture, it'll just make the situation
worse.”

“I need you to ask Lucky to get me out
of this CBC job.”

“What? You're kidding, right?”

“I don't know.”

“Your job was one of the things I
wanted to talk to you about.”

“In what regard?”

“It's secure? You think it's
secure?”

“If it were an American network I guess
I would be judged on the success of the upcoming television season. Here, I
don't think it matters. It's more like a government department than a real
network. Why?”

“Speaking of government departments,
ever hear of a Jasper Crabb?”

“Jasper Crabb? The name is familiar,
I . . .”

“Are you aware that there is an active
investigation into your vineyard by the U.S. Department of Agriculture?”

“Who told you that?” What the fuck was
this? Elliot wondered.

“Lucky Silverman. Elliot, this guy is
connected like no one you know.”

“Why does he care about the USDA and
the vineyard?”

“While there is no way you, a witness
but not a co-conspirator, could be compelled to return to the States to testify
about the wiretap, if you had broken laws by illegally importing rootstock to
the U.S. . . . you could face extradition.”

“I thought you said this was good
news.”

“Lucky is in your corner.” Mike
retrieved his bag and took it to a couch, where he sat. “He'll watch out for
your interests. Lucky is with a group that has discreetly funded the protection
of the Sixth Amendment.”

“The Sixth Amendment, remind me.”

“Rights of the accused. This is
progressive stuff.”

Mike unzipped the bag. Elliot assumed
he was getting a fresh phone with which to call Lucky, but instead he withdrew
two loaves of bread. They were hollowed out. Mike bent down and began untying
his Bruno Maglis.

“Bread?”

“Yeah, Barry's a Farinist,
so . . .” Mike put them on. “They're actually not that
uncomfortable, but you don't get much wear. Lucky says he's grooming Barry for
politics but he'll have to be born again. A Farinist might get elected in
California, but Barry's got better chances in Texas. He was born — the first
time, that is — in Corpus Christi.” Mike stood and walked a circle, trying out
his bread shoes. “So I can report that you are happy being home in Canada,
giving back to the country you were born in, leader in public service, blah
blah?”

“No. This is temporary and getting more
so quickly. I want to go home.”

“Canada is your home.”

“My intention, all along, was to get
out of show business and live full-time in my vineyard.”

“That place, the
CBV . . .”

“The CB
C
.”

“Whatever. It's not really show
business, is it?”

“Well, no,
but . . .”

“And I thought you said that wine you
make is lousy.”

“I never said that.”

“Somebody did.”

“I really don't know what point you are
trying to make to me, Mike.”

“Lucky Silverman, a man who is much
more powerful than you seem able to grasp, needs you to stay out of Dodge. This
wiretap business has the potential to . . . People in Los
Angeles, a few people, would like nothing better than if you permanently
relocated.”

“Permanently, never.”

“Don't mess with these people,
Elliot.”

“Is that a threat?”

“No. It's advice.”

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Mark

Not answering your cell. Mark in a dust-up
in Soledad. Broken index finger and some bruising. Dreadful for his parole.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Re. Mark

Was in meeting. Can't reach you. What
happened?

An hour and six calls later, after a
single ring, “Hello?” It was Lucy, finally.

“What happened?”

“He got in a scrap. Something to do
with his conversion to Islam. The atmosphere is extremely tense — there are over
six thousand inmates in a place built to hold twenty-five hundred.”

“Is he hurt?”

“He's not a fighter.”

“Jesus. We
have . . . There has to be
something . . . Can't we have him transferred to a better
facility?”

“They are all bad, Elliot. It's
punishment.”

“Is he in danger?”

“I don't think it was that big a deal,
words exchanged, a couple of punches thrown. And I understand that there is some
protection from his community.”

“What community?”

“Muslims,” said Lucy.

“Right,
Muslims . . . Lucy, I should come down there.”

“There's nothing you can do. He's in
solitary confinement now, but just a week.”

“Oh god. Tell him I love him.”

“I do, every time I visit.”

“I . . . the
thing . . . the thing is . . . I
feel . . . Jesus . . .”

“Are you crying? Don't cry,
Elliot.”

“No, I'm
nasal . . . humidity here, goddamn lake. There has to be
something we can do.”

Elliot listened. There was cycling
static, the pops and pings of outer space raining on the line, but silence from
Lucy.

“I'm doing everything we can,” she
finally said.

“Locura
Canyon,”
Bonnie answered.

“Hi, Bonnie. Is Walt nearby?”

“Elliot, long time no see.”

“I have made several efforts —”

“Elliot, listen to me. Nobody is going
to extend us credit. Walt's telling me you've got the best grapes he has ever
seen out there and you won't even have bottles to put it in.”

“The best he's ever seen — he said
that?”

“That wasn't my point. As it stands the
bank is going to own the first decent vintage of wine this place has produced.”

“I'll sort it out.”

“From up in Canada?”

“I'll try to come down. Don't say
anything to anyone. But I'll try. Is Bill Diehl still the branch manager in
SLO?”

“He's called me personally,” said
Bonnie.

“I'll talk to him.”

“Sure you will.”

“I'll refinance.”

“Again?”

“It's the American way, Bonnie. Where's
Walt?”

“He and Miguel are in the vines, he's
got his cell.”

“Best Syrah I've ever seen
grown in California,” said Walt.

“You're shitting me.”

“Nope. And because their sites were
coolest and they had a longer hang time, something about the pace of ripening,
they're more northern Rhône in characteristic, but the sunny side, you know,
Côte Brune . . . those kind of tannins and iron too, shows
as blueberry ink, but fresh ink, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I do.” Elliot adored the fresh
ink of the northern Rhône but placed it farther south, at Cornas.

“Grenache is a few weeks off but the
fruit is spectacular. I mashed a bunch up the other day, no colour but terrific
juice. The Mourvèdre got the occasional lick of fog, which worried me first, but
with the exposures there and the daytime heat it seems just the trick. I picked
at Pradeaux, in Bandol, in 1990, that's what it reminds me
of . . . You there, Elliot?”

“Yeah. This
is . . . it's wow.”

“I'm looking at Miguel right now and
he's doing a dance . . .” Walt laughed and then said something in
Spanish that Elliot couldn't quite make out. “He just tasted the Counoise and,
you know, it's tart. It's got serious zip, Elliot. It's all sort of coming
together. I mean it won't be anything like a Châteauneuf, anything at
all . . . but it's gonna be a good wine.”

“I'm coming down soon.”

“Good idea. Bonnie's freaking out.”

“I know. Thanks, Walt.”

Elliot put the handset in the cradle.
On the first two monitors hanging from the ceiling were talking heads, one newsy
with affected gravity, the next chatty and smiley; on the third screen, forced
jollity on a working kitchen set,
easy-nutritious-low-cal-fun-for-the-whole-grain-family-entertain-at-home-Prozac
cookies being baked; on the fourth, some brown people dancing around a downed
jet fighter, cut to them dragging the barbecued pilot through the dusty streets
of a faraway shithole. Daytime television. He spun his chair around and looked
out toward Lake Ontario. Making genuinely good wine was an accomplishment. Rarer
than most people supposed but not unprecedented on the Central Coast. Given what
Walt was saying, Elliot's viticultural practices were vindicated: he wasn't a
dabbler or a hobbyist. And if he could replace the Zin in the mix with Matou, he
could make more than good wine — he could make great wine. He was trapped in his
bullshit gig at CBC. It wasn't on. If people got out of his way, if he could do
things as he knew they should be done, if he didn't have to forever take notes
from morons. Someday a group of people, friends, would be having supper, the
evening might be warm enough, even with the breeze, to eat outside, and the food
would be good and the talk better and the stories funny and they would have
wine, a twelve-year-old bottle of 303 Locura Canyon that Elliot had bottled ten
years from now, and someone would taste it and say, “My, that's lovely.” As
urgently as he had needed to get out of Los Angeles, he now needed to get back
to Enredo, to Locura Canyon Road and his vines.

ELLIOT CHANGES HIS
mind. It
was
wise of Rainblatt to throw a party on the first
night of the new season. The alternative was to sit at home and watch, waiting
for something to go wrong. (Technical hitches were commonplace at the CBC.
Elliot had asked about this and was told there was a system of “fault reports”
in place. These, it turned out, were kept in an archive maintained by three
staff positions with no authority to do anything at all.)

The choice of venue was Rainblatt's:
the bar on the top of the Park Hyatt Hotel on Avenue Road. It was of a decent
standard for a hotel bar, and possessed some personality. It was bursting and
boisterous. Booking it for a private function, which was rarely allowed, was a
show of Rainblatt's pull, his Toronto bona fides.

It being an evening with his superior
and many subordinates, Elliot guessed he'd be putting away the whisky in
quantity, so he took a taxi. En route he saw a billboard for tonight's premiere
episode of
501 Pennsylvania
and a poster for
Reason
on a bus shelter.

Hazel was pacing outside the front
doors of the hotel, hauling on a cigarette.

“Camels?” Elliot recognized the
scent.

“I suppose. I bummed it off some guy
with an American accent. I'm going to have to buy a pack.”

“There's not much that can be done
about it now,” Elliot said. “It's out there.”

“What is?”

“The season.”

“I'm not nervous about the season. It's
that bar up there.” Her vertigo. “The damn thing is open — the balcony, it's
open.”

“Have a quick drink.”

“You'd like that, Elliot, wouldn't
you?” Hazel said, looking him in the eye. “I don't think I can do this.”

“It's really your party, Hazel. You
have to.”

Elliot presented his arm. Hazel crushed
the last inch of cigarette beneath one of her snakeskin mules and, wincing, let
Elliot lead.

Most of those filling the room
had only a passing association with the production of the new slate of shows.
They'd bought those bus-shelter ads or signed off on some payments to the
production companies. Nevertheless, they were claiming ownership, which Elliot
reasoned was a good thing.

Rainblatt was anchored to the bar. He
beckoned Elliot to join him. Hazel's breathing had become irregular as soon as
they'd stepped into the elevator; now, looking across the room to its celebrated
balcony, its view over the sparkling downtown and the great lake beyond, she was
a clattering flag of tiny gasps. Her fingers were boring into his muscle. He
dragged her along.

“Hazel,” said Rainblatt. “Get you ahhh
a drink?”

“Double bourbon,” said Hazel.

“Do you have Woodford's?” Rainblatt
called to the bartender. “And a glass of red wine.”

“Are you sure you want a bourbon,
Hazel?” asked Elliot.

“I thought I said a double.”

“I dare say you've spent the odd
evening h-here, eh, Elliot?” asked Rainblatt.

“Once or twice.” Elliot sniffed the
house red, supposing he had to drink it out of courtesy. Why did people assume
that, being in the business, he must have wine?

“C-come, really?” Rainblatt grinned as
though he was privy to some secret of Elliot's.

“I think so.”

“I would have thought it was one of the
last refuges.”

“How's that, Victor?”

“The smoking. Out on the balcony. Isn't
this the last venue in Toronto?”

“Is it?”

“Yeah,” said Hazel, who looked to be
weighing whether it was worth going out there to have one. She consumed the
first half of her whisky in one draught. “Bartender?”

“I suppose you are even a greater
pariah in Cah-California than here in Toronto. Don't worry, I smoke too, love a
cigar.” Rainblatt leaned in, stage-whispered. “When you ahhhh snuck out for one
during that dinner party at our house I was desperate to join you.” Rainblatt
recounted several other occasions when, during meetings, Elliot had absented
himself. Elliot supposed he would have to puff on a cigar later so as to
continue to prop up the plausibility of Rainblatt's reasoning. In every instance
but the one at Rainblatt's house, he'd merely been avoiding the man.

“And, ahhhh,” said Rainblatt, “I
thought this might be a half-pack evening.”

“I'm not worried,” said Elliot. “The
promotion hasn't been the best, but the return to the core mandate bought us all
kinds of free press.”

“I have it on good authority,” Hazel
said, pounding back the remainder of her drink, “that
501
will be favourably reviewed in the
Post and
Leader
. And I know the view that
Reason
is the best thing on television this year is held by every significant
television critic in the country.”

“Do we have those?” asked Elliot,
getting a laugh from Rainblatt.

“I only wish I could watch the shows,”
said Rainblatt. “But this damn thing with my balance. I'm sure it's going to be
a great season.”

“Thanks to Hazel,” Elliot offered.

“Top managers always take the blame and
always assign the credit.”

Hazel openly rolled her eyes.

“Nothing so noble, Victor. It really
was Hazel's season. ”

“Then I suppose you'll have to share
this with her. Bartender?” Rainblatt pointed to something below the bar.

The bartender produced a bottle of
Isabelle d'Orange.

Were Elliot's face and neck reddening
like a boy's? Of course: it all made sense. Rainblatt's reminding him of his
unexplained absence from the dinner party was the bait, and then that line of
inquiry about the smoking; now, like a trial lawyer, he was entering the
incriminating exhibit into evidence. Of course Rainblatt had noticed Elliot
studying the bottles, of course he noticed when one of two rare articles went
missing. A pair was a pattern.

“I thought I had two of these in the
cellar, but when I went to fetch it there was only the one. I must have drunk
the other one without knowing, though Pat Cahill says that's unlikely.”

“Cahill?” said Elliot, unable to take
his eyes off the bottle.

“He said I would have remembered it. I
asked him what would be a good bottle to give you, and he said this one.”

Elliot noticed tightness in his chest
and let it go with a breath. “Thank you very much, Victor.” Rainblatt hadn't a
clue that the first bottle had been nicked and subsequently chugged. It was only
some old wine in his basement. “I really do appreciate it.”

“It's hardly much of a gift for me,
though, is it?” said Hazel polishing off her bourbon. “I don't drink.”

Rainblatt laughed, thinking Hazel was
cracking a joke. “Stella tells me you're off to California?” said Rainblatt to
Elliot.

“Yes, flight early tomorrow morning.
Just for a couple of days. Things seem under control here.”

“Business?”

“Pleasure, actually. My winery.”

“At least you won't be in L.A. with
those nutty Faranistas.”

“Faranists. What about them?”

“They arrested one on Barry Hart's
property, he was carrying a large bread knife and had a list of big Hollywood
names. Don't worry, Elliot, I didn't see yours there.”

“Any screenwriters at all?”

Rainblatt seemed not to have heard him.
“Sure seem to be a lot of crazies out there.”

“California's the last hope before
you'd have to drown yourself in the Pacific,” said Elliot. “A diet, a religion,
a high concept . . . people out there are predisposed to
believe.”

“Come out to the balcony,” said
Rainblatt. “It's time for a toast.”

“On the balcony?” said Hazel, and then
rattled her empty glass at the bartender.

From up there Toronto looked
the perfect place. The concrete and steel of the city seemed borne on a sylvan
cloud, a metropolis in the high canopy. A turboprop plane approached the airport
on the near island in the lake. It was a Miyazaki movie. Elliot reflected that
he hadn't really ended up in such a bad spot. He would come back here and visit
after his permanent return to California.

Elliot was sure Mike was overstating
the danger in his going back to the States, but as a precaution, he'd had Bonnie
book him a flight through San Francisco. Nobody from Los Angeles would see him.
What harm could come of a few days among his vines?

Rainblatt was crowded to the balcony's
edge by his audience. Elliot looked back over his shoulder and saw that Hazel
was nerving it, her back pressed to the stone wall nearest the passage back into
the bar, readied for a quick escape.

“Please, everyone,” said Rainblatt.
“Don't worry, I will be brief.” The chuffed murmur of the free-boozed diffused
in the hope that Rainblatt meant it.

“Such an evening befits the launch of
our new television season,” said Rainblatt. “Blue skies — the sort we've been
talking about for a long time — above. I don't mind admitting that things were
b-b-bad — I doubt that if Elliot Jonson had known how bad they were he ever
would have accepted his position. Thank goodness he did.”

There was a ripple of applause, faint
and fake enough to tell Elliot that, for those attending, he was mostly unknown
or disliked.

“The change in leadership brought bold
changes in direction. We should all be thankful that Elliot Jonson chose to come
home. I want to —”

“Can't hear back here!” called
Hazel.

“Sorry,” said Rainblatt. He pulled a
chair from a nearby table and stood on it. “I want to, to
toast . . .” Rainblatt raised his glass — which Elliot
recognized, in retrospect, as the fatal miscalculation. “Ell —”

Elliot believed that he had started for
Rainblatt, that he had made to save him. And there were others, too, who saw
their Head in Chief teetering and reached out to help. But the accident, as
accidents always do, transpired in an instant. It was over before any of them
could lower their raised glasses. And yet it was experienced — at least by
Elliot — frame by frame.

Rainblatt's screwy semicircular canals
must have corrected his momentum in the wrong direction, for as he started to
list, to tip, he seemed to push off from the chair, kicking it aside, as if it
were part of some acrobatic party trick. He actually cleared the parapet
cleanly, his feet flying high. He fell backward, his arms windmilling a
desperate backstroke, twisting as he dropped. His head went first, facing the
street so that his last sight would be the ROM Crystal he so despised, surely
looking to Rainblatt like a baby barn rocketing to the heavens.

“—iooooooooooooooot . . .”

It was, Elliot thought, peculiar to
feel the need to see “news” of an event at which one had been present not ninety
minutes earlier. Was nothing reality until it was on TV? And yet here he was,
back at his condo, searching his television for coverage of Rainblatt's
plunge.

During his perfunctory interrogation by
the Toronto police, Elliot had noticed a sizable contingent of CBC newsies at
the scene. Both the national and local teams were there, and a drunk from the
radio service. But the story was not flagged in the billboard at the top of the
national broadcast. Elliot clicked over to Pulse 24 in time to see a shot of
someone hosing down the sidewalk outside the hotel but heard only, “For Pulse
24, I'm Peter Warne.” He switched back to CBC and muted the volume; perhaps they
would have an item together by the end of broadcast. He heard a cork pop in the
kitchen. Hazel.

She'd poured herself a mug of the
Isabelle d'Orange. “Poor bastard. To go like that. For a while there, when
Victor caught wind of the plan to sell parts of the service to the Chinese, I
worried that the Prime Minister's Office or CSIS might have his brakes fixed,
but . . .”

“How's the wine?” Elliot asked,
reaching for his best stemware.

“Oh, that's right, this is the bottle
Victor gave you. If I hadn't seen it myself I would have assumed he'd been
pushed.”

Examining the bottle, Elliot saw that
Hazel had poured a good quarter of its contents into her mug. He filled his
glass to one-third its capacity. The wine had lost all colour at its edge; where
the liquid met the glass was as clear as water. Then there came a wider region
of amber or brickish orange. Only at the very centre of the sample, with a
salmon aura, was there true red: glossy and sanguine like the heart of a small
animal. Elliot sniffed it.

“I've never seen anyone die before,”
said Hazel, walking from the kitchen to the couch in the living room. “Wait,
that's not true, I saw my father die. Never seen . . . a
fatal accident, I guess.”