‘Your cocktail, sir,’ Adrianna said, setting the martini at Will’s elbow. He thanked her, picked it up and they clinked glasses.
‘It’s not like Cornelius to miss vodka,’ Adrianna observed.
‘You just want an excuse to check out the Brothers Grimm,’ Will said.
Adrianna didn’t contest the point. ‘Gert looks like he’d be fun in bed.’
‘Is he the one with the beer belly?’
‘Yep.’
‘He’s all yours. Anyway, I think they’re a package deal. You can’t have one without the other.’
Will picked up his cigarettes and wandered over to the front door, taking his martini with him. He turned on the porch-light, opened the door and leaning against the door-jamb lit a cigarette. The Tegelstrom kids had gone inside, and were probably tucked up in bed by now, but the lights Peter had put up to entertain them were still bright: a halo of orange pumpkins and white skulls around the house, rocking gently in the gusting wind.
‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ Will said. ‘I was going to wait for Cornelius but…I don’t think there’s going to be another book after this.’
‘I knew you were fretting about something. I thought maybe it was me—’
‘Oh God no,’ Will said. ‘You’re the best, Adie. Without you and Cornelius I’d have given up on all this shit a long time ago.’
‘So why now?’
‘I’m out of love with the whole thing,’ he said. ‘None of it makes any difference. We’ll show the pictures of the bears and all it’ll do is make more people come and watch them getting their noses stuck in mayonnaise jars. It’s a waste of bloody time.’
‘What will you do instead?’
‘I don’t know. It’s a good question. It feels like…I don’t know…’
‘What does it feel like?’
‘That everything’s winding down. I’m forty-one and it feels like I’ve seen too much and been too many places and it’s all blurred together. There’s no magic left. I’ve done my drugs. I’ve had my infatuations. I’ve outgrown Wagner. This is as good as it’s going to get. And it’s not that great.’
Adrianna came to join him at the door, putting her chin on his shoulder. ‘Oh my poor Will,’ she said, in her best cocktail clip. ‘So famous, so celebrated, and so very, very bored.’
‘Are you mocking my ennui?’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought so.’
‘You’re tired. You should take a year off. Go sit in the sun with a beautiful boy. That’s Dr Adrianna’s advice.’
‘Will you find me the boy?’
‘Oh Lord. Are you that exhausted?’
‘I couldn’t cruise a bar if my life depended upon it.’
‘So don’t. Have another martini.’
‘No, I’ve got a better idea,’ Will said. ‘You make the drinks, I’ll go fetch Cornelius. Then we can all get maudlin together.’
Cornelius had spent the dregs of the afternoon with the Lauterbach brothers, and had a fine time of it, watching the wrestling flicks and smoking their weed. He’d left as darkness fell, intending to head back to the house for a couple of shots of vodka, but halfway along Main Street the prospect of dealing with Adrianna had loomed. He wasn’t in the mood for apologies and justifications; they’d only bring him down. So instead of heading back he fished out the fat roach he’d connived from Gert, and wandered down towards the water to smoke it.
As he walked, weaving between the houses, the wind carried flecks of snow from across the Bay, grazing his face. He stopped beneath one of the lamps that illuminated the ground between the back of the houses and the water’s edge and turned his face up to the light so as to watch the flakes spilling down. ‘Pretty…’ he said to himself. So much prettier than bears. When he got back, he’d tell Will he should give up with animals and start photographing snowflakes instead. They were a lot more endangered, his gently befuddled wits decided. As soon as the sun came out they were gone, weren’t they? All their perfection, melted away. It was tragic.
Will didn’t get as far as the Lauterbach house. He’d trudged maybe a hundred yards down Main Street – the wind getting stronger with every gust, the snow it carried thickening – when he caught sight of Cornelius, reeling around, face to the sky. He was obviously high, which was no great surprise. It had always been Cornelius’ way of dealing with life, and Will had far too many quirks of his own to be judgmental about it. But there was a time and a place for such excesses, and the Main Street of Balthazar in bear season was not one of them.
‘Cornelius!’ Will yelled. ‘Cornelius? Can you hear me?’
The answer was apparently no. Cornelius just kept up his dervish dance under the lamp. Will started down the street in the man’s direction, cursing him ripely as he went. He didn’t waste his breath shouting, the wind was too strong, but part of the way down the street he regretted not doing so because without warning Cornelius gave up his spinning and slipped out of sight between the houses. Will picked up his pace, though he was tempted to head back to the house and arm himself before pursuing Cornelius any further. If he did so, however, he risked losing the man altogether, and to judge by his stumbling step Cornelius was in no fit state to be wandering alone in the dark. It wasn’t so much the bears Will was concerned about, it was the Bay. Cornelius had headed in the direction of the shore. One slip on the icy rocks and he’d be in water so cold it would stop his heart.
He’d reached the spot where Cornelius had been dancing, and followed his tracks away from the comfort of the lamplight into the murky no-man’s-land between the houses and the tidal flats. There he was pleased to discover Cornelius’ phantom figure standing maybe fifty yards from him. He’d given up his spinning and his sky-watching, and he was standing stone-still, staring out towards the darkness of the shore.
‘Hey, buddy!’ Will called to him. ‘You’re going to get pneumonia.’
Cornelius didn’t turn. In fact he didn’t move so much as a muscle. What kind of pills had he been popping? Will wondered.
‘Con!’ he yelled again. He was no more than twenty yards from Cornelius’ back. ‘It’s Willi Are you okay? Talk to me, man.’
Finally, Cornelius spoke. One slurred word that stopped Will in his friend’s tracks.
‘Bear.’
There was a cloud of breath at Will’s lips. He waited, as still as Cornelius, while the cloud cleared, then scanned the scene to the limit of his vision. First to the left. The shore was empty as far as he could see. Then to the right; the same.
He dared a one-word question.
‘Where?’
‘Ahead. Of. Me.’ Cornelius replied.
Will took a very slow sideways step. Cornelius’ druginduced senses were not deceiving him. There was indeed a bear maybe sixteen or seventeen yards in front of him, its form barely visible to Will through the snow-flecked murk.
‘Are you still there. Will?’ Cornelius said.
‘I’m here.’
‘What the