Order of Good Cheer (16 page)

THE TWO CHINESE
women did look twenty. Andy sipped a glass of ice-cold Aussie shiraz and watched them, surrounded by a circle of smiling older men in suits. It was funny to think that commerce fuelled this swarm and not the expected other. One was very cute, though her face was big and almost perfectly round. Like a poem that rhymed, she was pretty but seemed limited. The other had a horse face but she looked kind, and you could see her sense of humour. They both wore a skirt and matching blazer — the pretty one's navy, the other's tan. Both up on high heels. Neither tapped a foot to the Eagles song “Hotel California,” a bizarre selection Andy thought at first, but then not, given the makeup of the crowd. Counting back, he realized the song was as old as he was, and offensive to none.

Though all the other men kept their shoes on Andy had taken his off by the door because after his walk in the rain he pictured the odd spongy soles of his new shoes retaining a dirt stew and depositing it into Mr. Madden's cream carpets. And shoeless he would loom a little less over the Chinese women. He sipped and watched them from the edge of the foyer. He heard “beautiful city” in a tortured accent from the cute one, while the other — who wore a wooden Haida comb in her hair — kept saying “shipping.”

Andy would approach the women soon. If they asked him, he could tell them about Prince Rupert. It wasn't like he'd boned up but, sure, he'd gathered his thoughts. First he'd ask them, Did you know that Prince Rupert
exists
because of Asia?

He'd say that even as a boy he found it funny that on maps of the west coast of North America, the only dots were L.A., San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, and Prince Rupert. Sometimes Portland would be there, sometimes Anchorage. Why Prince Rupert? Because — and the funny one might like this — Prince Rupert was
supposed
to be big. Mapmakers were
anticipating
PR to earn its dot. Prince Rupert was supposed to be Canada's grain spigot. There was supposed to be a giant lineup of ships out there.

He'd enjoy telling them that Prince Rupert was an invention, born in 1908, when Mrs. Eleanor M. MacDonald of Winnipeg, Manitoba, won the $250 prize for her suggestion of “Prince Rupert” as the name for the town being built at the end of the new national rail line on Canada's northern west coast. She chose the name because Prince Rupert was the first governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, a cousin of King Charles ii, and also she liked his looks.

Andy would add that Charles Melville Hays built the rail line after noticing, on a map of the world, how British Columbia toppled westward the farther north one went, meaning northern B.C. was hundreds of miles closer to Asia, miles that would lure any shipping company wanting to save fuel. In 1904 his engineers declared the base of Kaien Island, ninety miles south of Ketchikan, Alaska, to be one of the world's finest deep-sea harbours — ice-free year round and a minimum channel depth of one hundred feet. In 1908 the rail line was finished, two hundred white people lived on-site, and Mrs. MacDonald won her contest. In 1910 Prince Rupert was incorporated as a city. In 1912 Charles Hays died on the
Titanic
.

Andy would ask the Chinese Wheat Women if they'd seen the ten-foot-tall sign perched five miles out of town on a scenic
bluff overlooking the Skeena. Perhaps the distances were a little pathetic for being hand-painted.

Tokyo, 3830
Vladivostok, 3928
Panama Canal, 4303
Shanghai, 4642
Hong Kong, 5286
Halifax, 6641
Sydney, 6671
Calcutta, 8332
London (England), 9104

Andy could explain, if they were still nodding, that these destinations remained dreams. In 1990 Prince Rupert had a population of twenty thousand. Today there were seven thousand fewer. And if they were at all intuitive, the Chinese Wheat Women might already have noticed how, despite the smiling and laughing, every guest here looked hungry. The Wheat Women, especially the non-cute one, might link it to
all this rain
, and she'd be partly right. She might also notice another shared feature, an impatient lean to the body, something like a pugilistic barfly's chin sticking out. The Wheat Women would do well to prepare themselves.

Andy's glass was empty, a perfect excuse not to approach them just yet. He pivoted on new socks in the direction of the bar. He wondered if they knew about the Highway of Tears. Probably they did, probably they read the local newspaper and knew the death count had just risen from twelve to thirteen, all Native girls — who didn't look that unlike the Wheat Women — who had disappeared on the highway to Prince George after
sticking out their thumbs not more than a mile from this house. But they might not know about the Iron Chink, not unless they'd toured the Cannery Museum. A hundred years ago, when the salmon were limitless and Chinese cannery workers stood shoulder to shoulder moving fish down the line for one to gut, one to scale, one to fin, one to cut in chunks, and one to stuff in a can, along came a machine that could do the work of all of them. And, as the cannery owners congratulated themselves, they didn't have to feed it. But they did give it a name.

ANDY WAS STANDING
in a small line for a refill of shiraz from the bartender, a sad-eyed and shirt-and-tie-garbed Tsimshian girl nearer fourteen than nineteen, when Drew, Pauline, and Leonard arrived. Seeing Leonard, Andy recognized the girl to be one of his innumerable nieces, and now he understood Leonard's presence here too. Leonard sometimes used events like this to get loud about the white man's corporate intentions, and Andy hoped he would keep his mouth shut. With the Highway of Tears again in the news, things could escalate. In any case, as the Leonard-niece awkwardly topped up his glass, Andy supposed this girl got her job in the first place because of Leonard. Further evidence that this girl got her job as someone's favour was an ice-tub full of not only white wine but also the red. Andy tipped forward to whisper that she should get those reds up on the table because they should be room temperature, and the girl complied, dead-faced, as she likely would have had he been a strange man in a bathrobe in off the street, asking her to hand over ten bottles of wine. He saw that her earlobes were freshly pierced and the holes, one of which was off-centre, were inflamed and swollen closed.

Drew didn't hang up his coat before striding into the living room to kneel at his father's stereo. The Eagles disc was near its end but Drew took it out to put in — Andy could see when he reached his friend's side — a Miles Davis. Drew knew that the legs beside his head were Andy's.

“He won't even know the diff,” Drew said quietly, but with the weight of judgement. “Nice duds,” he said to the new black pants beside his face, this judgement a little harder to gauge. From the speakers a trumpet opened with strangled
poop, poop, poop
s, that Davis sound.

Funny how, kneeling there, Drew looked the teenager again, easily playing the role of intolerant son in Dad's house. Andy couldn't help but think of Drew and his own son, Chris, and what goes around comes around. Though it wasn't the same — Chris wouldn't even talk to Drew, and here Drew had willingly come to his father's party.

Andy deliberately kept his eyes from the mantel and its central picture not three feet away, a depressing photo if you knew what to look for: a blowup of Drew, Pauline, and twelve-year-old Chris posed outside Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York, Chris holding up the tennis ball Pete Sampras had smacked into the stands. Apparently Chris, who it turned out liked playing tennis but not watching it, had never not been a jet-lagged and whiney mess the whole trip. In this picture, much celebrated by Mr. Madden because the trip to the U.S. Open had been his gift to them, Chris glowered. Drew looked only wary (he'd told Andy the guy taking their picture was weird and Drew was wondering if he'd get his camera back). And there, with her arm around his waist, was Pauline — her smile way too happy, inaccurate.

Andy hadn't seen his friend for a week, what with Drew's absence from work and then a shift change. He cupped Drew's
shoulder, said hi, and offered him his untouched glass of merlot.

“Ah, man, I'm on the wagon.” Drew shrugged, smiling, and here his judgement was directed at himself.

“Holy cow. This is a first.”

“It wasn't helping the situation.” Drew met Andy's eyes and it passed between them that he knew Andy and Pauline had talked.

“Well, maybe it will,” Andy offered, nodding. Surprising himself with an expression at least ten years gone, he added, “Gotta listen to the head-Betty, I guess.” Somehow the Betty Ford Clinic had joined your inner voice of guilt to become your head-Betty, who kept tabs on your drinking.

“Yeah, well, who knows.”

Andy snatched his wine back to his chest. “Can't have it anyway because it's mine.” He took a sloppy sip. In the middle of this little gesture he knew he'd wanted to have a beer with Drew, and a chat, a heart-to-heart. A beer would've been the only way it would happen.

“Andrew! Good to see you!”

Drew's father was at his elbow and they shook hands. Mr. Madden was the only person who called Andy Andrew, save for his mother, who might use it on occasions like his birthday, as if to remind him of his actual name. Drew and Andy were both Andrews as kids, and everyone agreed that because of their obvious close friendship, to avoid confusion one must became Drew and the other Andy. Apparently he and Drew chose. Neither had recollection of any of this, and neither got excited when any parent hauled out the anecdote. And when Mr. Madden called him “Andrew,” Andy always got the slight sense he was being reminded that his own son had been made to change his name furthest and that Andy had been done a favour.

“Nice spread,” Andy said, smiling at the cloth-draped table holding platters of hot and cold hors d'oeuvres. (He saw one was
chicken à la king in puff pastry, which he hated.) A longer table was just now being set up with warming trays and Sterno pots. A Native man of about twenty-five, with one of those bodies that is wide face-on but almost skinny in profile, wearing white apron and tall chef's hat, lugged a stainless-steel bin and placed it in its cradle over the lit flame. Andy recognized the man as another of Leonard's relatives.

“It's the Chamber of Commerce,” Drew's father explained. “I was only happy to provide the space.” He smiled and, houseproud, with a hand indicated first one end of the long living room, then the other. He leaned into Andy with a stage whisper. “Maybe I'll get to keep the leftover hooch,” then he gave both Drew and Andy a stage glare. “Not that there'll
be
any, with you two here.”

Mr. Madden had bright eyes, and charm. Andy figured he was PR's most successful realtor largely because, like some politicians, he'd got so good at trying to act like a nice guy that, over the years, he'd actually become one. Drew's mother had died twenty years ago when her car went into the Skeena as she drove back from Terrace. It was a straight stretch, no ice, suicide an unstated possibility. Drew had inherited his brooding nature from her.

Mr. Madden cheerfully asked Drew if he'd be “stereo master” for the evening, and his son said okay and walked off, up to the bar, and got himself a bottle of beer. Andy watched him tilt it back for a long first sip.

THE CUTE ONE'S
name was Li and the other's May. May was the more interesting to talk to, and not just because her English was better. Andy had been right in guessing that she had a sense of humour.

Still standing in front of the couch, the Chinese Wheat Women hadn't left each other's side, and now Andy and Pauline chatted with them, just the four. The various town dignitaries and businessmen appeared satisfied for the time being that they had done their duty.

May drank beer out of the bottle and Andy another glass of wine. To break the ice he asked her if she could stand the weather here. She told him she came from “a raining city” north of Shanghai and she found the weather here “okay.” He asked her if she'd ever heard of Dancing Monkey.

“It's a dish, a meal, that royalty would eat,” he explained. “I think in the south. Canton.”

“It is monkey that they ate?”

“Yes. It's the most decadent thing I've ever heard of. I was wondering if it still might exist in, you know, certain circles. They'd have to be very
corrupt
, I think.”

“Corrupt to eat monkeys, yes.”

“Yes.”

“But, no, I have not heard of this, ah, dish?”

Andy asked her about her last name, which had sounded like, simply, E. He asked how she spelled it, and May told him that in her language she drew it with a character, and in English it was for her to choose.

“I could spell it one E. But then I have a curious name. I think it would be a very ‘hip' name, like the name of a rock star.”

“I guess it would.”

May's eyes shone above her constant smile. Prone to the wordplay that non-native speakers sometimes are, she enjoyed her own humour. “I could spell it a single Y, which would be phonetically more correct, I think. You have ‘sill-y,' and ‘Bill-y,' and ‘y-clept.'”

“Holy cow!”

“Yes. ‘Hol-y.'”

“No — you said ‘yclept.'”

“This word is not so common I don't think.”

“People actually only say it to be funny.” She could be a friend, a PR girl, except for the way she kept nodding, almost a bow from the shoulders, every third or fourth word, a gesture of subservience maybe, even if it wasn't felt.

“But if I spell it Y, then people I think will pronounce it ‘why,' which will be curious, to have a question for a name.”

“May Why.”

“Yes. I am being asked a question every time I am spoken to. It is like a joke. You have a very famous joke about the word ‘who.' It is a baseball joke.”

“You know that one?”

“Yes. It is very, very funny. I think so. My English teacher used it in his class. He was from Canada, from Halifax. Grant. He told us his name and home were all we needed to know, to speak English. Glant flom Harifax. It took a very long time to teach my ear to teach my tongue.” Saying all of this, May had gently turned away from Li and dropped her voice, and Andy understood that she didn't want to embarrass her friend, whose tongue was not as well taught.