The skies opened up soon after Shoe left Victoria’s house, the rain all but overwhelming the Mercedes’ single centre-mounted wiper. Traffic on the approach to the Lions Gate Bridge was light, but at times it was like driving underwater. Headlights were almost useless. Only the very brave or the very stupid drove at more than twenty or thirty kilometres per hour. Then, about halfway across the bridge, the traffic slowed to a complete halt. Shoe put the car in gear and, as the rain drummed on the roof and the reek of ozone filled the car’s interior, he tried to wrap his mind around the fact that his best friend was dead. He couldn’t. It just didn’t fit.
He thought back to his last conversation with Patrick. On Friday evening, after Patrick had broken the news about his resignation, he’d asked, “What are your plans for the future?”
“Vague,” Shoe had replied.
Patrick sipped his drink. “You’ll be what, fifty on your next birthday? When you were twenty-five, what did you think you’d be doing when you were fifty?”
“Selling used cars.”
“Really?”
“No, of course not.”
“When I was twenty-five,” Patrick said, “I thought that by the time I was forty I’d be rich.”
“You’ve done pretty well for yourself,” Shoe said.
“Maybe,” Patrick said. “For a kid from the Point.” The Point, Shoe knew, was Pointe St. Charles, the Irish working-class district of Montreal, where Patrick had grown up and where his family still lived. “But I’m not rich,” Patrick said. “Bill is rich. When I was twenty-five, that’s how rich I thought I’d be by the time I was forty. You remember my cousin Sean, don’t you? Sean Rémillard?”
Shoe nodded. He did, vaguely. He’d met him at Patrick’s wedding, eight years ago.
“When Sean was twenty-five—he’s a month younger me—he was going to be a member of parliament with a portfolio of some kind by the time he was forty, and prime minister by the time he was fifty.”
“How’s he doing?” Shoe asked.
“He’s after the nomination as the Liberal candidate in a federal by-election in Richmond. Or is it Burnaby-Douglas? Whatever, it’s pretty much a one-horse race, according to Sean. Maybe it is, too. He’s got the backing of Allan Privett.”
Patrick spoke the name as though he thought Shoe should recognize it. He didn’t and he said as much.
“No?” Patrick seemed surprised. “He’s one of the most powerful men in the party. Certainly the most powerful man in the B.C. wing. He’s an old family friend of sorts, had a big house across the lake from my uncle Albert’s cottage in Saint-Adophe-d’Howard, north of Montreal, where Sean and I—and our cousin Mary—used to spend our summers. He left Quebec shortly after the separatists came to power in ’76 to take over his wife’s family’s insurance business in Victoria. He lives in Lions Bay now. So does Sean.”
Patrick fell silent then, and his boyish face took on a faraway expression, eyes focused on some distant point, some distant time. Shoe waited patiently, sipping his club soda, almost certain that Patrick was thinking about his cousin Mary. He had told Shoe about her. Mary was his mother’s eldest brother Albert’s only child. She had drowned in a sailing accident when Patrick was seventeen. She’d been nineteen. This past summer, when Patrick had been moving his uncle Albert, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, into a nursing home, he’d come across all of Mary’s things, neatly packed away in boxes in the basement of Albert’s house in Montreal. It had brought back a lot of painful memories, he’d said.
After a few seconds of silence, Patrick refocused and said, “Sean’s married to Allan Privett’s daughter Charlotte.” He smiled ruefully. “I had a major hard-on for her when I was seventeen, but she had this huge crush on Sean. She was only fifteen, though, and he thought she was a pest. Besides, Sean and Mary, well, let’s just say that they were somewhat closer than first cousins are supposed to be, if you get my meaning.” His voice trailed off and the faraway look returned momentarily. Then he said, “So, who knows? Unless—well, with Allan Privett’s backing, maybe Sean will be prime minister by the time he’s fifty. He asked me to work for him, you know.”
“Patrick,” Shoe had said, with mock horror. “Please don’t tell me you quit your job to go into politics.”
“Good lord, no,” Patrick had said, placing his hand over his heart, feigning pain. “I’m hurt you would even entertain such a thought.”
“Sorry,” Shoe had said. “What are you going to do?”
“I’ve got a couple of irons in the fire,” Patrick had replied evasively, “which I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to discuss right now.”
The traffic on the bridge started moving again. Shoe exited the bridge and descended into the wet green gloom of Stanley Park. Primordial rain forest loomed on either side as he turned off the wider Causeway onto Scenic Drive, a slower but more direct route to the Burrard Street Bridge across False Creek to Kitsilano. The rain stopped.
Patrick had suggested they get something to eat. “Victoria is out tonight,” he’d said. “With Kit Parsons.”
“Kit as in Christopher?” Shoe said, thinking of Kit Carson, the American frontiersman and “Indian fighter.”
“As in Katherine,” Patrick said. “Victoria met her when she took an interior design course. Kit was the instructor. Wait till you meet her. She’s only about five feet tall, but tough as nails. Very butch. I’m sure she’s a lesbian.”
They’d driven in Shoe’s car to the Kettle O’ Fish on Pacific, parking on Beach almost directly under the approach to the Burrard Street Bridge. After they’d ordered, barbecued tuna for Shoe, surf-and-turf and a half-bottle of California Chardonnay for Patrick, Patrick had asked, “How do you see yourself living after you retire?”
“Pretty much the way I’m living now,” Shoe replied. “I expect I’ll have more time to read and sail. I might not have anyone to sail with, though. You’re going to be too busy getting rich.”
Patrick smiled wryly.
“What’s with all these questions about my future?” Shoe asked.
“I guess what I’m trying to tell you,” Patrick said, “in a roundabout way, is not to expect things at Hammond Industries to remain quite what they’ve been for the last twenty-five years. Or the last ten, for that matter. Maybe it’s time for you to consider getting out too. While the getting is good, so to speak.”
“Is that what you’re doing?”
“Yes.”
“Is your leaving going to be the cause of things not staying the same?”
“No, but my leaving isn’t going help. I’m getting out before things start falling seriously apart. And, believe me, they are going to start falling seriously apart pretty damned soon. Bill’s getting old. He’s not going to be able to hold it together much longer.”
“No offence, Patrick,” Shoe said, “but am I detecting a hint of sour grapes here? I know you and Bill didn’t see eye to eye on whether the company should go public, but that’s hardly evidence he’s losing control.”
“Maybe not,” Patrick had replied. “But going public is the only way the company is going to survive into the twenty-first century. That’s not the only reason I resigned, though. It’s time for me to move on.”
And now it was time, it seemed, for Shoe to move on too, whether he liked it or not.
When Shoe got home, Jack was sitting on the back steps, in the light of the porch lamp, smoking a cigarette and twirling the putter from the incomplete set