Although Tulip’s career as an entertainer may have fallen on tough times her bank account – judging from the opulence of her Mont-Royal nest – had not. She lived in a three-story brick scamper-up that had it all, including stalking grounds, an aviary, and rat warren.

Tulip’s nest did not look like a crime scene at all. There was no bright yellow tape, no crowds of reporters. Since the forensics team left, there was barely a police presence at all – just one fierce looking Rottweiler, whose primary job was to keep news hounds and curious cats away.

The murder had occurred in the indoor stalking grounds, where Tulip – and her many guests – would hunt small mammals and birds for snacks and sport. A chalk mark outlined the position of Tulip’s body. She had died in a fetal position. In the midst of her oversize furniture the chalk outline looked small, like that of a kitten. This made me think of my own litter of pups back home in Willowdale.¹

Without a word, Mittens and I both began to sniff.

I was investigating an area of floor unexpectedly rich in smells when I had the good fortune to discover a cleverly disguised trapdoor, which opened to reveal a sunken nest – the kind you found in every fashionable cat’s house during the 1970s. The floor of the nest was covered by a velvet pillow, on which there was an imprint of the ear of a dog.

In the middle of the pillow was a card with an inscription written in gold. It read, “Tulip, here is a symbol of how my entire pack will protect you.”

I sniffed. “Look here” I said, pointing my muzzle toward a tiny hair on the card. “A hair from a mouse’s tail.”

Mittens was beside me in an instant. He ignored the hair, but sniffed the card thoroughly, and then said, “Barks, I smell a rat.”

Which was a point for Mittens. A bit of mouse at a crime scene was the antithesis of evidence. Mice always get to a crime scene first, and are almost never perps. Ratus ratus was another matter, entirely.

“Do you recognize this rat?” I asked.

Mittens never answered my question. At that moment a gust of wind triggered our next discovery – a card floated out of an open book onto the floor. Mittens carefully picked up the card by the edges. On it several sentences had been written by a bold cat’s paw. It was a copy of a letter Tulip had sent to her litter-mate and twin, Euphemia.

Mittens’ read in a slightly high-pitched, theatrical voice,

Dearest sister Euphemia,

Today I lost my patience for Trouble’s damned feral inscrutability. I asked him what he was really thinking. He told me, in a flat voice – no affect at all, not even a purr – that he hates La Belle Dam but he can’t help himself. “Do you mean me?”, I implored him. Am I the Belle Dam?“You know what I mean” he said as he leaped out of the fire escape. I haven’t seen him since. I don’t know what I’d do without him. But I am loosing him. I can tell from his scent and unfocused ears. I am loosing him.

What can I do?

xx oo Tulip

Mittens’ concluded his oratory with a little bow.

“Are there other notes?” I asked.

“There are lots of notes down at the station. Tulip was quite a writer. But do you mean, was there anything incriminating? Non. Only this. Mais cela, c’est très intéressante, n’est-ce pas?”²

“It is interesting indeed”, I replied. “Let us inspect the book the note fell out of.” I bounded over to the small leather bound volume. It opened to a poem called La Belle Chat Sans Merci.³

I scanned the first few stanzas, and stopped at the fourth. In the left margin the words “Tulip” and “La Belle Chat” were written using/by a kittenish paw.

I flipped to the first page of the book where I found the following dedication, “To my cat-bitch twin sister on my birthday.”

We have stereotypes about the love litter-mates and twins have for each other. Like many stereotype, it is both true and false simultaneously. I knew that Tulip had a deep, abiding bond with her twin. They had shared most of their experiences with each other, since child-birth. But it took scant effort to imagine that love erupting into a most vicious cat-fight whenever one or the other felt slighted.

I showed Mittens the book. He read the dedication and said, “We have another suspect.”

“Indeed”, I replied.

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Our investigation began at the morgue, which was a nondescript block of glass and steel on rue Parthenais, four blocks west of the St. Lawrence River. We entered via a trap door on the east side of the building.

Mittens refused to inspect Tulip’s body in the presence of the coroner – who was a fastidious, copper-haired Spaniel named Sniffy – so we entered the small, grey operating theatre unescorted. We found the infamous feline beauty’s body laid out on a gurney. Although Tulip rested on metal, not marble, if you let imagination rule you, you could see her as a statue of Juliet in a final, tragic repose.

The first thing I noticed was her ears: they had been clipped to look like those of a lioness. Although I am a dog, or perhaps because I am one, my unthinking response to this was, “here lies a predator.” The effect created by Tulip’s wild ears was enhanced by the leopard spots tattooed onto her pearl white fu

Mittens spoke to me with a plaintive voice, “Elle est très belle. Non, elle est trop belle”¹ He groomed his whiskers with his bright, white polydactyl paws, and then continued. “If she were not so beautiful none of this would happened hien? There would be no story for the press, you wouldn’t be here, she would still be alive. We are driven to crazy, violent acts because of beauty. We are driven …”

I agreed with one aspect of what Mittens had just said. Although the case appeared complicated, it was likely that the murderer had a prosaic motive, like jealous rage. Nevertheless, I took issue with Mittens’ implication that motives only came from the instinctual side of the psyche. For me, Domestication is more than just a lid on the id. It has its own set of motivations, some of which can overpower our elemental drives. Perhaps Tulip’s murderer was compelled by lust or rage. Perhaps the murderer had a more subtle motive.

We began our investigation by sniffing the corpse. The dominant smell was a mixture of formaldehyde and disinfectant, but beneath that I found a more diverse layer of odours: feline, canine, and much to my surprise, pantherine. This latter mystery was solved by Mittens, who said, “She was wearing leopard-musk perfume when she died.” The Cat Detective shrugged, “It is all too much. C’est trop. Trop.”2

“Let us examine her wounds” I said, wanting to move our analysis along. Although I am not squeamish I don’t like autopsies because they are so raw: everything is stripped away by death – our hopes, our pretensions, our very spirit.

Tulip lay on her right side in a fetal position. Mittens lightly hopped onto the gurney and rolled her onto her back so that we could inspect the wounds on her stomach and neck. “Tabernacle” the cat said sub voce. Tulip’s fur was tufted by clotted blood; her stomach was lacerated in two places, and the interior of her throat had been exposed by one savage bite.

“Do you see these paw marks?” Mittens said, pointing first at the large cuts on her belly, and then at the mess around her throat.

“Dog” I replied without hesitation.

“Indeed. Can you recognize the breed?”

“Judging from the size, depth and angle I’d guess a large, muscular breed, perhaps a Shepherd or Rottweiler. I cannot tell from the scent, which is odd. You’d think there would be a molecule of smell in such a wound. There isn’t. All I smell is formaldehyde.”

“Do you notice anything odd about these paw marks, I mean aside from the fact they have no scent?”

I looked at the marks again. “Yes, I do notice something very odd. The wounds on the belly are from a left rear paw. I can’t tell about the throat.”

“A rear paw. Indeed! How do you know that?”

“From the shape of the wound. Dogs never move exactly forward, they always lead slightly from one side, which results in characteristic differences between paws. This mark is one that would be made by the back left paw of a right leading dog. I am one such dog myself.”

[I sat down and raised my paw for him to inspect; he saw how the my paws and claws had been slightly deformed by my orientation.]

“Could the paw that created these cuts have been not attached to an actual dog’s leg?” Mittens wondered.

I looked at Tulip’s wounds one more time. “Mittens, I think you’re right. These gashes move from bottom right to upper left – against the paw’s orientation. It would be impossibly awkward for a righting-leading dog to do this.”

“What can we learn from the wound on her neck?” Mittens hopped onto a small space beside Tulip’s right ear. From there he inspected her severed carotid artery. He sniffed then said, “This was an indelicate death.” His voice was more fastidious than sympathetic.

“Regardez!” Mittens lowered himself so that his nose almost touched the corpse. “There are fang marks on her neck. Tulip was bitten before her throat was slashed.” After a moment, he pulled his whiskers back, raised his head and said, “Cat”.
I took a corroborating sniff. “Mittens, can you identify the animal who did this?”, I asked.

He replied, “I will be able to, when I meet him. But that is of little account. I am certain these fang marks were made by Trouble, Tulip’s tom-friend. It looks like a love bite but …”, Mittens shrugged.

Our examination left us where we were when we started, in the sense that the prime suspects were unchanged: Tulip was probably killed by either Bull, her ex-mate or Trouble, her current mate. Bull had the miscegenation and criminal history angles; Trouble was feral.

The evidence suggested that Tulip was murdered by clawed blunt instrument which made me suspect Bull more than Trouble. That’s because of the way cats approach violence. An old folk tale, which dams tell to their kittens illustrates my point. The tale is about a mythical kingdom called The Land of Cats, which tradition locates in western China, just north of Shangra-la. The ancient Chinese kingdom of Dian was the The Land of Cats’s neighbour to the west. At the time of the story Dian was ruled by a particularly ambitious monkey king. The tale begins with the monkey king asking his Chief Minister, “Why is The Land of Cats not part of my kingdom? Tell me about this country’s army. Do they have archers? Do they have trebuchets? Do they have cavalry? When he was told that The Land of Cats had none of these things, the foolish primate king ordered an army to be dispatched at once to conquer it. When this great, well-equipped army arrived at a narrow pass on the road outside the cats’ capital city, the entire adult population of The Land of Cats attacked with claws unsheathed and teeth bared. The Dian army was destroyed in one morning. The moral cats draw from this tale is that they do not need weapons because they are borne armed.

It was highly unlikely that a feral feline like Trouble would use a weapon other than his own claws or teeth.

As we exited, I glanced one last time at the corpse of Tulip, the erstwhile lioness. I was reminded of a game I used to play as a pup. It was based on a rhyme:

Who does the mouse fear?
The mouse fears the cat!
Who does the cat fear?
The cat fears the dog!
Who does the dog fear?
The dog fears the lion!
Who does the lion fear?

This last phrase was a cue for whoever was it to leap out of hiding and try to tag another pup while shouting, “The lion fears me!”.

Mittens must have heard me muttering the rhyme under my breath, for his next words were, “Indeed Barks, who does the lioness fear? Her lover? Her ex-lover? Another lioness? Herself?”

We were met at the exit to the morgue by an administrative assistant, who presented Mittens with the coroner’s report. Mittens accepted it with a merci and a little bow. He tucked the report into the satchel he wore slung across his chest. Before I could pose even one question, I found myself nudged towards the exit by the Cat Detective’s muzzle.

Mittens said, “Barks, now we must go to Tulip’s apartment. Let us make haste my friend.”

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“Eleanor, I’m sad that we have to meet again on such a sad occasion.” Marta looked briefly upward – towards heaven, no doubt – and then gestured languidly. “How are you?”

“Fine. Fine.”

“And your husband? Oh, what is his name…”

“Brent”

“How is…?”

“He’s fine as well. He sends his regrets. He still can’t move very well after the skiing accident.”

Marta moved closer, too close. Somehow she managed to completely envelop the space around her even though she was small and slight. “You look a little rounder than the last time I saw you. Are you…?”

“Marta!” Despite herself, she blushed.

“You’re getting old, you know. To think that your father passed away without seeing a child from his youngest daughter.”

“I – I really must go.” She abruptly pulled her simple black skirt towards her and then joined the crowd of people moving towards the church. For the past two days she had managed to contain much of her emotion. Papa’s death had come as no surprise to anyone and thankfully had been quick and dignified. Despite this, she felt considerable grief and beneath that an amorphous feeling, perhaps fear, that took little provocation to bring to the surface. Marta, of course, provoked her with dispatch.

With a brief glance over the crowd she spotted her brothers and began to move towards them. They huddled together smoking at the base of the stone stairs that led into the tidy Episcopal Church. Maybe she was wrong to avoid her grief. But she did not deny death’s inevitability: she defined her life with death in mind. Of all the members of the family she was certainly the one most focused on enjoying her life. Peter and Arianna saw no more of life than their offices and the inside of their commuter cars. Cameron, though he indulged his emotions was not at peace with them.

“Eleanor …”

“El…”

Her two brothers separated slightly and drew her into their circle.

“How are you doing Ellie?” Cameron hugged her affectionately and then slide his trademark silver flask into the palm of her right hand. She looked for signs that he had been on a bender and saw none. Though he had probably slept in his clothes and his eyes were slightly red, he was quite composed, his hands were steady and his enunciation was good. She felt relieved. Cameron was such a loose cannon. You never knew what would set him off and how dramatically he would act. Everyone was worried that he would be a spectacle during the eulogy. With a quick, practised gesture she took a large gulp of scotch, put her arm around his waist and returned the flask to his right pocket.

“Come here, hold me.” Peter grasped her unsteadily and then fell towards her in an extremely sloppy hug. Despite herself, she pulled slightly away. The three of them swayed unsteadily for a moment and then Eleanor gently extracted herself from her brothers. So Peter was the one to watch out for. He had always been such a source of stability. In fact his sobriety and pragmatism frequently annoyed her. She put her arm through Peter’s and rather firmly escorted him up the stairs into the church.

The dark wood and stone interior of the church was formal, cold and not very comforting. This did not bother her. Death was not a time for soft comforts. She did not want any form of ministration to distract from her grief. She and her brothers walked towards their seat in the front pew of the church and sat down between their vigorously weeping maiden aunts and their uncharacteristically quiet young niece Leah. The histrionics of the aunts at first annoyed and then unsettled Eleanor. The aunts had the deepest faith of her relatives. They attended mass daily and prayed for their family’s wide array of sins. This faith seemed no support to them now. But then again how could any faith alter the undeniable fact of their loss? As the service began the aunts gradually settled down, comforted by ritual.

After a brief, though tedious, introduction by the minister Cameron rose to deliver his eulogy. He ascended the pulpit with sombre dignity. It was almost surprising to see such a militant atheist as he act so reverentially in a church. He was like some form of anti-priest about to give an atheist’s sermon. Eleanor remembered how he had liked to play priest when he was much younger and much more impressionable. She smiled at the memory. Perhaps it was true that we hold our greatest hatred for what we despise in ourselves. This thought caused her to worry again. She knew that Cameron’s grief was quite great. This eulogy was very important to her and she feared that he would blow it. A flash of anger coursed through her at the thought of her brother engaging in a drunken rave. She fought it down. She knew that Cameron was fine. In fact she suspected, or at least hoped, that he was in good form. He cleared his throat and began.

I read recently in a newspaper about two towns in Nova Scotia which neighbour each other. The first town was, I believe, called Altruism. The good citizens of Altruism were concerned about unfortunate members of their community, the sick and afflicted. So they established a generous social welfare system. The citizens of the neighbouring town, Parsimony I think it was called, also cared about the disadvantaged, but they had other concerns as well. Because they fretted about freeloaders and high taxes, Parsimony’s welfare system was not quite as good as that in Altruism. The result was that all the sick and unemployed people in Parsimony moved to Altruism.

For the first time this week Eleanor felt at peace. Cameron was up to some mischief. She was relieved that his delivery was sly and not sarcastic. Certainly listening to Cameron’s parable thus far was better than listening to some doddering stranger talk platitudes. He continued.

Suddenly, the two towns became polarised. Altruism, which started off being only slightly more generous than Parsimony was forced to become very generous. This annoyed many of the citizens of Altruism, who like their cousins in Parsimony were also concerned about high taxes. They experienced resentment because they were being forced to be good, and they couldn’t do anything about it because no one would step forward and openly advocate being less generous to the poor. In contrast, the citizens of Parsimony ended up being less good than they intended. Rather than helping the poor less, they ended up not helping the poor at all. This disturbed many of the citizens of Parsimony because they didn’t intend to be bad, they merely wanted to economise. But again, no one could do anything about it because no one would step forward to support raising taxes.

Eleanor looked around the church at various generations of friends and relatives. Attention levels seemed to correspond with age. The children were very restless and bored. At the beginning of the service they were certainly on good behaviour because they sensed that their parents were upset. However, the intensity of their parents’ emotions could not muzzle the children’s immediate needs for very long. Beside her nieces and nephews sat her older cousins who were attentive but not much less restless than their children. The most attentive people, she noticed, were those closest to death themselves. She wondered how much of their weeping was for their lost friend and how much was for themselves. Perhaps Papa was one of their dwindling circle of companions and they mourned their increasing loneliness; or perhaps they cried out of fear of their own impending death. These thoughts were not cynical. It struck her as sensible that people should mourn this way. Indeed, she was disturbed by those who did otherwise.

A child started screaming out of boredom and an embarrassed mother hustled her out of the church. “Better get to the point Cameron”, she thought.

Just as the people of Altruism and Parsimony were forced to be better and worse than they intended, so too are most people directed on the paths of good and evil by circumstances which distort and exaggerate their moral inclinations. Sometimes being good is easy, because it corresponds with our self-interest, and sometimes it is difficult, because the entire weight of the world opposes it.

Most of us play the moral odds, dramatising our virtues and disguising our vices. My father was unique among the people that I have met because he didn’t play these odds. He never deliberated and chose to be good. He just was good. For this we were very lucky children. Though as a family we suffered losses and experienced some deprivation, we always had his guidance, support and love. To his memory we can look for an example, and for his life we can give thanks.

Cameron voice’s wavered as he finished the last words of his eulogy. He paused briefly to collect himself and then walked, head bowed, off the altar and sat down. The priest, in a great show of dignity then rose and continued with the service.

As the priest began to talk a quiet voice whispered into her ear. “Aunt Eleanor. Aunt Eleanor.” Her youngest cousin Leah lightly but firmly tugged at the sleeve of her dress, excited, or rather distraught by some thought. “Aunt Eleanor”, she whispered, “they’re going to put grandpa in the ground aren’t they?”

“Yes they are.” Leah moved slightly closer to Eleanor, seeking comfort. Eleanor put her arm around Leah, seeking comfort herself.

“I’m never going to see grandpa again.” she stated simply.

With those words Eleanor’s calm was shattered. A feeling of sadness and rage welled up within her. She wanted her father back now. Her feelings were naive and pointless. Nevertheless they completely possessed her. The feelings resonated within her and then were replaced by one enormous feeling of emptiness. Her grief didn’t matter. Papa was not coming back. Shaken by these intense emotions she sat quietly weeping through the rest of the service until people rose and began to leave.

As they walked out of the church to the car Eleanor watched little Leah’s tentative efforts to understand the actions of the adults around her. For this moment roles were reversed. So often Leah would be the one raging about loss and powerlessness, usually in the context of an early bedtime or restricted access to TV. Now she watched the adults around her adapt to their own feelings of loss, denial and powerlessness. Leah timidly held onto the skirt of Eleanor’s dress and then grabbed her hand. Eleanor looked down at her. What was Leah learning from the actions of her aunts and uncles? Was this just a lesson in social graces? Was she learning to live her life in the shadow of death, or merely to be careful with people who swayed and stank of alcohol?

“Aunt El, I miss Grandpa and want him back”.

“So do I. So do I.” As the car pulled out of the church parking lot Eleanor had the feeling that it was wrong merely to let life go on. Leah’s loss and her loss were both real. A good man who brought joy to the world was gone. Certainly his time had come, yet to deny her feelings of remorse felt wrong, was wrong.

They shortly arrived at the family house for the wake. The house, as always, looked small and drab compared with the vivid memories of childhood. Thankfully the feelings of shame that characterised the visits of early adulthood had long since subsided. Though the house was in ill repair and was definitely in a poorer section of town it represented a life from which Eleanor had successfully escaped. Now she could view it calmly as one of many important influences on her. In fact, as she moved among the hallways and rooms a feeling of reflective nostalgia infused her.

Her own room was nearly untouched from the time she left home for the last time to go to college. The significance of this hit her for the first time. Clearly Papa had missed her more than she had realised. They had always had an awkward relationship. Peter and Arianna had led lives that Papa approved of, and they had remained in constant contact. Cameron he rarely saw or talked to. She was somewhere in between. Papa had never fully understood her, nor she him. For him, life was a series of inevitable sacrifices. She often accused him of sacrificing even when not necessary. Of course, her life had required so few sacrifices. Because of her stable character and her supportive family and friends, she had avoided being seriously hindered by the pratfalls that mar all lives.

She walked absently into her room. Try as she might she could not think of it as anything but a museum. She methodically began examining the artefacts of her life. The room was filled with Austrian symphonies, books on German philosophy, French poetry, the trappings of aristocratic European culture that had fascinated her during her early adolescence. Here and there pieces of African and Asian culture hinted at the direction that her interests would take during her first decade away from home.

From habit she opened the drawer of her dresser and withdrew the little safe that contained her personal tokens, diaries, letters and photographs. “How Papa raged at that little safe”, she thought. It seemed so trivial, but because it defined in material terms a part of her that was no longer dependent upon him it had marked an important passage in her life. She sat down on her trundle bed and idly began to sift through her most treasured effects.

She slipped easily into the past. Death is a time of completion, a time for recollection and summation. Methodically she went through stacks of pictures and notes. At one time many of these things would have embarrassed her. She was prone to fads which she embraced with enthusiasm one day and abandoned with derision the next. Today she felt no shame at all. These artefacts had been, and still were a part of her.

She picked up a folder of photographs and glanced idly through it, beginning with the last page and moving backwards towards the first. One page in particular caught her eye. It contained pictures from a wilderness retreat she had taken with a group of friends from university. They had camped in a meadow on the wide flood plain of a river. She had a vivid memory of hiking after midnight through fields of flowers, giggling, half drunk, half clothed, going to the river to swim. A mist had formed where the warm air of the river valley met pockets of cold air from beyond. The light from the full moon shone strongly but unsteadily through this damp air. The fragrant mist and the slight sting of flowers brushing against her skin had made her feel very primal, like a participant in a rite of spring or a bacchanal.

Eleanor removed the photograph and noted the names and the date written on the back. She turned the picture over and looked at it again. She felt disturbed. Something about it caused dissonance. There were no sad memories attached to the trip. She recalled her friends’ names and smiled at the positive feelings they evoked. “What is wrong with this picture?” she thought again. Then she realised that this was the last time she had ever spent with any of the people in the photograph. During the last year of college she had seen them less and less and then this last time and no more. For the second time that day a feeling of loss surged through her.

Eventually all the threads of life end. We mark many of these endings but miss far more: life is full of little endings that individually or cumulatively can far outstrip the impact of a sudden, though foreseen death. A childhood friend who one day moved away never to be seen again. A phone-call never returned. A letter never opened. An impact never felt. Non-events that mark the stages of life so quietly and so conclusively.

“Auntie El…” Leah’s timid, demanding voice disturbed her reverie. “Ariana says you have to come down now.” Eleanor carefully put the picture back, then put the folder away. She then took Leah’s hand and returned with her to the wake.

 

 

My Last Adventure is the final book in the Shively series. In this story Shively is manipulated by a Russian spy into using COVID money to build a private prison.

The story is set during the the first months of COVID (March – June 2020) but frequently references Daniel Defoe’s account of an 18th Century plague in London.

The Return of History

“What is that?” Elena – a spokes-model for Consolidated Gulags – snatches my phone and starts to read. She is covered in shadows except for her ruby red lips, which reflects the dim bedroom light as she speaks.

We continued in these Hopes for a few Days, but it was but for a few; for the Peoples were no more to be deceived thus; they searcht the Houses, and found that the Plague was really spread every way, and that many died of it every Day: So that now all our Extenuations abated, and it was no more to be concealed, nay it quickly appeared that the Infection had spread it self beyond all Hopes of Abatement.

She sits down on the edge of my bed, leans over me and says, “Washington Post, right?”

“Its about another plague, in London”, I reply hesitantly. Elena plays rough so I’m careful not to make myself a target.

“Yah ,” she replies, “They’ve got COVID bad in England. Maybe I’m thinking of Italy but whatever: its just time if I’m wrong. But why did you grunt like this story means something? This is the same news we’ve been reading since March.”

“That’s my point. There’s nothing new. This article was written by Daniel Defoe 300 years ago about a plague in London. Doesn’t London then sound like New York now?”

“So?”

“America is back in history again. We had forgotten that war, famine, pestilence and plague are real. “

“You say such stupid things, James Shively!” Elena presses her hands onto my shoulders while she straddles me. Her blue eyes are cold and focused. “You’ve read War and Peace?”

“Uh sure”, I reply carefully. My words are a bit thin because the pressure on my shoulders is intense. Though she has a build somewhere between waif and wood nymph, Elena is surprisingly strong. “I’ve read the war bits and the party chapters. I skimmed the rest.”

“Good.” Elena is now so close to me I can smell tobacco on her breath. She continues, “My point is about the Battle of Borodino. Did Russia leave history when that massacre was turned into a book? Of course not.” She shoves hard on my shoulders. I think of resisting her, but I’m pinned. She continues, “So you think America left history when its politics moved to television? Was America out of history when Nixon carpet-bombed Cambodia or George Bush carpet-bombed Iraq?”

“Uh”, I reply tentatively. I can’t say more because I can barely breathe. But I get her point.

She continues, “America was certainly in everyone else’s history when Reagan and Bush and Clinton were presidents.”

She releases my shoulders and takes a drag on her Juul and says as sje exhales, “Can you even talk about when in your weird theory, James Shively?”

She takes another drag, exhales and then presses her face close to mine as she intones with her breathy alto voice, “Borodino, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Georgia, Ukraine. Same people. Same violence. Same. Fucking. Thing.”

I recount this experience dispassionately, but dispassion is the furthest thing from my mind as Elena kisses me with aggressive, passionless lips.

To my surprise, her mood suddenly lightens. She releases her pressure on me and whispers, “James, your fingers are so beautiful. I have a special fantasy about them.” Another inhale on her Juul. “Do you want to know my fantasy?” She delicately kisses each digit of my right hand. “My special fantasy is to see your sexy fingers sign a contract for a large, new prison. Isn’t that hot?” She places her right hand on my crotch and begins to rub my manhood slowly, “It will be our prison. Tell me you share my dream, James Schuyler Hamilton Shively the Third.” She retracts her hand.

As someone who has gotten into serious trouble for thinking with my penis, my situation is problematic. You may scoff and say, “I don’t see any problem here. Lie and have sex with her. What’s the big deal? Men do it all the time. The exception would be to do otherwise.” If I had come from a less faux-feudalistic family, I might well have taken this proposed tack and said, “Elena, I’ll build us the biggest prison” and later renege on my promise. Our President does and its worked swell for him. But, alas, I am a Shively and though nothing else binds Shivelys to truth, our word is our bond.

Two very long seconds later I say, “Elena, I’ll get you that prison built”.

“Not you, us“, she replies. The pressure on my wrists relents. She glides over my awaiting, craving body.

And thus I receive my one and only reward for this god-forsaken project.

§

The dawn is more ass-crack than rosy-fingered. Perhaps Elena drugged me, last night. If she did so, it was just a bit. That’s definitely her style. Ruthless, but in a minimalist way. I stumble out of bed. Movement makes my hangover worse.

My phone buzzes. I remember last night’s promise and sigh, “Oh fuck” as I pick up my phone and flip to notifications.

My eyes are dry. It takes a moment to read the text, “Meet me at the K-Lounge for breakfast! I have your security badge and wallet.” Elena punctuates her text with a viking emoticon.

A typical Elena communication. Concise, clear and yet perfectly fucked up. She has stolen my wallet, compromised national security by stealing my id badge, used my money for cab fare and now wants to meet for breakfast in a lounge? This is all wrong. She is the lobbyist and I am the lobbied. This part of the process isn’t supposed to cost me time or money. Or indigestion.

My phone buzzes again. I look at it and grimace. Someone has included me in a Republican intern email group and I keep getting pictures of lobbyists in compromising situations. I mark the email as spam and sit down on my bed to gather my wits. That doesn’t work so I open the Defoe Diary for guidance, like I used to do with the I Ching in college. The first paragraph I read is inauspicious:

The usual Number of Burials in a Week, in the Parishes of St. Giles’s in the Fields, and St. Andrew’s Holborn, were from 12 to 17 or 19 each few more or less; but from the Time that the Plague first began in St. Gile’s Parish, it was observ’d, that the ordinary Burials encreased in Number considerably. … The last Bill was really frightful, being a higher Number than had ever been known to have been buried in one Week.

Thoughts of burial motivate me to shower and leave.

The walk to the K Street Lounge is pleasant. The April air is crisp and the sky is vivid cyan. Georgetown is clean, prosperous and bustling. American politics and culture may be polarized but I think that Republicans, Democrats and independents alike will concede that America makes the most sense if you’re rich. This morning the only off-putting element is the unexpected number of people wearing masks. The masks for the most part are cheery – or sports-themed – but strike me as sinister. Although there are few COVID cases in DC, the news out of New York is alarming.

Like me, everyone is looking at their phones. There are only 2 facial expressions, quizzical and smiling. The whole world is looking for either direction or support.

The entrance to K-Lounge is guarded by a bouncer. He asks for my name. l present him with my driver’s license, which he checks against a list on his clipboard. The list-checking strikes me as not so much out of context as out of time. It is 8:15 a.m. not 1 a.m. He grunts and unchains the velvet rope.

The decor of the lounge is strip-club modern, which is unsettling from the perspectives of both aesthetics and dining. My Oxfords, in normal times quiet shoes, clack sharply against the earth-toned tiled floor. The sound echoes off of the walls, which are covered in brown mottled mirrors and faux-wood paneling. I cannot name the faux-tree, probably mahogany.

The stains on the velvet couches are bio-luminescent.

Elena has already arrived. She is seated at the table beside a large, dangerous looking man who has a bald head and a broadly striped shirt. The stripes turn his impressive musculature into a topographical map. It is a good environment for Elena: her skin is positively radiant in ultra-violet light, her eyes have deepened two shades of blue and her lips glow an alluring purple-red. Tufts of her shortly cropped copper-colored hair have become blonde, like so many white shadows. She ignores my approach by taking a long draw on her Juul. When I reach the table she looks up, tilts her head slightly to the left and smiles coquettishly.

As usual, her smile makes me fleetingly feel like I’ve stepped through a looking-glass into Instagram.

Elena makes introductions as I take my seat beside her. “Bruno meet James Shively”. Elena nods at the broad shouldered man beside her. I proffer my hand. He refuses to shake it, nodding his head and muttering “COVID”. Despite his expensive clothes he has a slightly tone-deaf sense of cool: his suit and shirt have a Studio 54 sheen, and the air around him is infused with the smell of cologne. I wonder if he, like Joe Pesci in Goodfellas, overcompensates for his style deficiencies with a sadistic devotion to his work?

Bruno speaks first, smiling. He says, “So I’ve finally met the infamous James Schuyler Hamilton Shively Quattro. Imagine that”. There’s a hint of Jacobin terror in his eyes.

“I’m the third, not the fourth.”

Elena adds, “Yep. Only two other Shivelys before him.”

Bruno’s smile broadens. This relaxes me a bit. At least he has something resembling a sense of humor, even if he is laughing at me. Elena responds to his amusement with a terse, sweet smile of her own.

Sweet is her weakest look.

Bruno asks, “Do the Shivelys have a coat of arms?”

His question is music to my ears. The Shively Coat of Arms is one of the few things I can discuss with unrivaled authority. “Indeed we do”, I reply heartily. “Its divided into 4 quadrants. The upper right contains a Beaver Rampant against a field of ….”

“I don’t give a shit about rampant beavers”. Bruno is not smiling.

“He’s a Communist”, Elena interjects nodding at her companion, as if this somehow bridges the conversational gap that has opened between us. And it kind of does, if your concept of Communist includes beefy industrial workers who brawl with Nazis.

Bruno nods in agreement. “Da. Old-school Communist.”

I still don’t quite understand his ambivalence toward coats of arms. If he’s interested in them, why isn’t he interested in them? I say, “Why did you ask about my family’s coat of arms?”

Elena answers for him, “Bruno collects the coats of arms of his targets … I mean clients … I mean …”

Bruno interrupts, “I collect coats of arms like trophies. Here, look.” He hands me his phone, which displays a picture of the Schlemielpennick Coat of Arms and then begins to scroll. Its like a coats of arms guest list of a wedding I attended in Bali at the end of my senior year in college.

Although I desperately want to know the story behind each “trophy” – we’re talking about my friends, after all – I feel that my conversational time would be better spent mollifying him. I ask, “So what is a Communist doing working for Elena?”

The question makes me feel like Joe McCarthy playing “Whats My Line?”

Elena replies for him, “Bruno is my production assistant”. He nods grimly, in agreement and says, “Da. Production assistant. Elena says you promised to build a prison for Consolidated Gulags. I’m here to make sure that happens.”

I can think of nothing to say in reply. I mean nothing worth saying. We Shivelys are pretty good at spouting nonsense, but now doesn’t seem like a good time for that.

Bruno leans toward me and speaks. He looms so large he casts me in shadow. “Mr. Shively, I want you to know this prison means a lot to Elena.”

“Uh, yeah”, I reply.

Elena says spritely, “I’ll let you two get to know each other better. I’ll get breakfast”. She rises and dusts herself. The lounge is not particularly dusty, but the dust is visible in the ultra-violet light as it falls off her body. She looks like a punk Tinker Bell.

It takes Bruno and me a moment to find our conversational sea-legs. I speak once I realize he will never initiate conversation.

“Where are you from Bruno?”

“Gdansk. But I live in Moscow. My family moved there when Lech Walesa won. My family are real Communists.” He scoffs theatrically as he speaks the Polish laborer organizer’s name. He sounds like a Republican talking about unions.

It turns out that Bruno comes from a venerable line of Bavarian, Polish and Russian Communists. The same ones who had gun fights with Nazis in the streets of Munich and Berlin, and later killed Trotsky with an ice-pick in Mexico.

“What brings you to America, Bruno?”

“I did a contract for Defrauded Guaranteed.”

“I see”. My reply is hesitant. I am uncertain whether he is talking about a felony charge or an organization.

He notices my uncertainty. “Its a firm based in Palm Beach. Near the President’s … “

He smiles. His mouth glints when he does. His incisors are made of silver, with tasteful gold caps.

I take a deep breath and say what’s on my mind, “What do you want from me, Bruno?”

“From you, James Shively, I want nothing. This is about what she wants” he nods at Elena who is returning from the kitchen with our breakfast, “I’m here to break … how you say …”

… bodies … ? I complete his thought.

“Log-jams”, he continues. “I like that phrase. Log jams. It reminds me of forestry. My grandfather was a forester during his time in Krasnoyarsk. He was later rehabilitated.”

Although I am curious to find out how a Communist views the Gulag, I ask, “Do you have many other clients?”

“Not right now. Just Elena. She’s a big account. Keeps me very busy.”

I wonder what he means by busy, but do not ask because I more or less know and don’t want to. Which of course makes me wonder how he will kill me should I fail to deliver on this prison. I am certain that my death won’t be abstract. Despite Putin’s James Bond Super Villain fetishes, it won’t be from some rare isotope or designer poison. It will be physical. Very physical. Perhaps he will rip my larynx out with his bare hands. Perhaps take a bite or two before throwing me into the dumpster.

Bruno notices my consternation. “I don’t have anything against you, Shively. Its nothing personal.”

He taps his right forefinger on the table top and says, “Bon appétit!”. Elena has arrived with our food. She places a tray of breakfast sandwiches on the table, and takes her seat.

If you’re like me you may have wondered why strip clubs never make the Michelin Guide. I know the answer to this question: its the quality of the food they serve. I help myself to a bread-roll stuffed with scrambled eggs, and a slab of meat that looks like an extra in an Alien movie The toast makes me think of a hobo Sponge Bob torched on Skid Row.

Bruno devours his breakfast sandwich in three bites.

I listlessly pick at mine wondering where to begin. Or whether to. I don’t.

Elena doesn’t even pretend to eat her fruit bowl. Its covered in a thick sugar sauce which she uses as mortar for a tiny citrus castle she constructs with her grapefruit spoon.

Silence.

“A toast! ” Elena leaps to her feet, knocking a water glass over as she does so. “To our prison!” Bruno stands up, as if stretching. I slowly rise, feeling much older than my 35 years.

We clink coffee cups. Elena and Bruno drain theirs and toss them onto the floor with the kind of vigor I’d discuss with my therapist. I have a small sip and then place my cup gently down. It tastes like it was brewed with Flint water.

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