Chapter 5: The Suave Swine

In Paris, he would call her Maggie.

She had never lived in a big city before. Not even Vancouver or it's inner suburbs--so close to most of her life--had enticed her for more than a day or two. Transplanted from the tree-laden outposts of bumpkin BC to the City of Light, the plucky Meg and the perky Pootie would take on shades of feisty melancholy. Sudden bursts of irascibility would be followed by days of withdrawal until she became a muted Maggie, a name better suited to the quivering stiff upper lip with which she attempted to confront a culture overwhelming to her. Or so Olney interpreted, himself transported to extreme moodiness by a moribund will and the wistful ghosts of an artistic heyday.

But the new name was not without its hazards: Parisians invariably pronounced it McGhee.

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It was in fact she, one drowsy night in bed, who brought up the idea of going to Paris. Olney's long torso shot up like a vampire after dark. Was she kidding? They'd been talking about places in BC, little towns where she had once lived ... her conversation, really; he found the names depressing.

And then she mentioned Paris. It might have been easier to win the national lottery--the odds were a mere fifteen million to one--than to have predicted that her loving descriptions of such illustrious towns as Revelstoke, Skookumchuk, Osoyoos and Spuzzum would be followed by an idle wish to go to Paris. "Are you kidding?" he demanded, wondering if a mean streak ran through her gentle nature. "Maybe," she said, and dropped off to sleep.

Olney lay awake long afterward, a small drop of blood at the corner of his mouth from the tiny hook imbedded there, its line bobbing and wagging clear to the Eiffel Tower.

Paris!

Why, he'd just been through there on his way back to the States. But, didn't it sound good. In British Columbia less than a month, he already felt an urgent need to move on, to get back to ... Europe. Yes, what a stupendous idea.

As they took up the idea and played with it, their friends (mostly hers) from near and especially afar looked on with dismay. Paris? These soil enthusiasts lived up the coast and kept their notions of romantic travel to well within driving distance, usually to the nearest town for a movie (but only if it coincided with the weekly laundromat run). They were hard put to take their ruptured vehicles as far as Vancouver, a grand voyage often requiring weeks in the planning. At that, the trip was made from grim necessity: those hundred pound sacks of organic goodness were cheaper there. But Paris? Why, they asked, would anyone travel thousands of miles to live in linguistic isolation, to be driven mad by impenetrable roundabouts? Youthful Folly!

Although the Sixties were long gone, these folks still held to a variety of zealous beliefs. Bread, for example, was inedible unless yeastless and crammed with every known grain. (It was also a formidable weapon for drunken wee hours at Community Hall dances.) With toolshed tenacity they stuck to the notion that cities were peopled by a squirrely lot whose chakras were caked with sludge. Choosing instead to live in the Wholesome Bush with their visions of sturdy fruition through Good Hard Work, they held Communion with Nature and made from it the joists of their kerosene-lit mansions.

Upon Olney they hung the jacket of the Suave Swine. Adding to his reputation for past crimes against Peace in the Valley, he was now taking this child of nature out of Paradise altogether. Paris, they lowed, was a dying world whose enticements increased entropy; an unnatural, diseased and retrograde purgatory. Yes, Olney Garkle was the slick Yankee, the skinty sex fiend who used women for his own, usually spermatozoid, ends. And now he had sunk to using them for plane fare.

In the end, these terrenic worthies pronounced him unusefully hedonic, compulsive and perverted, overly attentive to cleaning his fingernails, given to unrealistic interpretations of the world, and dangerously uninterested in the ground beneath his feet.

They were right.

Olney had tried. He'd spent two years in the Great Canadian Bush. He admitted it was a good life for your transplanted middle class on the verge of nervous breakdowns in former fast lanes. Migrating from the garment district of New York to the crow-cawing forests of Vancouver Island or the Silvery Slocan was a lifesaving move for many tense souls.

Of course moving to the hinterlands meant more than the simple pleasures of fitting wooden dowels into wooden holes. You had to steeltoe the mark, keep chisels and the chain saw sharp, get the winter's firewood in by mid-summer, keep working on the new house, and keep that potter's wheel wet.

Olney had to admit he'd never done it well. It drove him crazy, and the reason it drove him crazy was the unending absence of fresh, spring-dressed young women to take his mind off the boredom of self-inflicted peasantry. The female population in those rigid little communities never changed. What he needed was a downtown to cruise once in awhile, a boulevard brimming with pale napes and long legs.

The world shrank to the size of the commune or village or island, yet the same things happened. Tepid affairs did their best to overcome the noisy incursions of wild, snotty children. In the absence of suitable intrigue, there was always an endless cuppa to be had at the general store. For money you had to keep looking for odd jobs with the same people: someone always needed a new roof, a new fence, or a new outhouse.

Somehow it was virtuous to lose your eyesight by using kerosene lamps to read by. And your cleverness was admired for miles around when you ran your cassette deck off a 6 volt car battery. The thing Olney hated most was the slimy bathtubs that people used once a week. Why once a week? Because there were only a few around and it was too much trouble to bring your own wood to heat them more often. Not that the bathtub owners would have minded. Excitement was so scarce, they welcomed one and all. "Come on you filthy fuckers, we'll smoke some home grown and have one hell of a good time." But lethargy kept everyone layered in sweat, their skin turning gray from whore baths at the Airtight.

And no matter who brought what sort of past to the country, whether a harpsichord maker or a Wall Street travel agent or an African tour guide or a special consultant to the Ontario Cattlemen's Association or an ex-Green Beret with a yen for assault or an ex-Nuclear physicist with a chronic case of the willies or an ex-priest or worse, within a year their perspective withered to the eeking perimeters of sod upon which they squatted. No stimulation. No inspiration. Nothing coming in.

Within a few years they turned into homogenized duplicates of each other, propping up lives that may have ground to a halt as far back as adolescence.

"Lessee now, who was the last one t'take 'imself out? Rate of one a year, you'd think t'would be easy t'remember. Well sir, t'isn't. But-uh, hmmm. Last year, eh? What's that? You say something? Oh, yes, I remember now. T'were Reggie Overoyster went down. Reason I recall's b'cause it happened just after me an' Rolly Winsome-Polyps got the rutabagas in. M'back was almost too sore t'help carry the coffin. But then, that 'as the case year before too. They always go at rutabaga time. Anyway, young Mavis Roastedgroat come runnin' over with the news, said Reg'd throwed himself head first on the blade of his new saw rig. No one could figger why, Reg mostly kept t'imself. Mave showed us the bits of his upper denture she found, sawed clean in half. Must've been the first thing t'go, after the lips'n'all. Me an' Rol were surprised. No one'd ever guessed he wore 'em. S'pose we were all too busy lookin' th'other way. Come t'think of it, I'm not even sure what Rol looks like."

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Olney and Meg spent their evenings at the kitchen table fishing for ideas on how to acquire heavy-duty booty in a hurry. At the moment, Olney was happily collecting unemployment insurance, biweekly checks to which he arduously forged the signature of Crusty's recently fled friend, Brute LaRue. Brute, on the lamb from untoward dealings in the Asian community, had told Crusty, "Here, take the money!" and run. Crusty turned the account over to Olney.

While Meg was trying to deal with the awesome organization needed for the move to the cream of capitals, Olney was frying his brains every night with cognac. "Et Tu, Brute," he toasted frequently.

He loved his cognac. It always came to the rescue when reality threatened to crumple his mind. Yes, Olney was starting to fret. Alone, he could live gallantly with his poverty. He had a good sense of himself as a centless being, and no wonder, since thirty dollars through the wicket at American Express had always been a windfall. But with a woman along, with this petite Pootie-e-e-e in particular, how on earth was he going to manage? Underlying Olney's natural optimism was utter hopelessness, and the thought made him sweat. No amount of money was ever enough, was all he knew. Beneath the kitchen table, his knees knocked their bony caps together with fear.

They were far from flush. Margaret P.'s income included a few hockable possessions and a sizeable chunk left over from her job at Pepper Island's cafe. She would pay for everything in the end, selling her car, her loom, some furniture, the Sony clearing-blaster, and every odd and end she could lay hands on. Olney's sole contribution was a letter to Paris, to a couple he'd never met--relatives of an old friend--asking them to cock the old coup d'oeil for any vacant apartments or rooms or anything.

Ten days before departure they received a par avion from Gaston and Subji Dutronc: We leave mid Dec for six months India. Stay our place. $500 US per month ONLY. Others also want. RSVP immediatement.

"Olney," cried Meg. She knew him well enough by now to see the glint of obsessive excitement in his eye and the impossibility of removing it. "That's about twice as much as we can afford. And they're talking US dollars!"

"What else are we going to do? Die of fish-'n'-chip poisoning in this burg? We'll just have to earn some money over there. Pootie, it's perfect. From the plane to a taxi to the front door of our own place. And hey, I just remembered, I can always sell wind-up toys on the street. It just so happens I know someone who knows someone who...who's got this business, see, imports these gadgets, like, you know, little soccer balls with feet...."

"Nitwit."

"It was your idea to go."

"Well, you'll have to do something. At most we'll have enough money for about three months rent. Two, if we want to eat."

Next morning, the world was treated to a rarely seen, bright and early, merrily whistling Olney as he drove Geronimo to the post office and sent off a special delivery letter accepting the offer.

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Chapter 6: Right Sock

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