Gail Bowen - The Glass Coffin

“Great exit line,” Gabe said admiringly. He turned to me. “And to show you how seriously I take my duties as best man, I am going to tame the virago. I’m assuming there’ll be a reward.”

“If you can save this dinner party, you can name your price,” I said.

“Now that’s an offer I can’t refuse,” Gabe replied.

After he left, I opened the oven to take out the venison.

“Anything I can do?” Evan asked.

“I’m fine,” I said, putting the pan on the counter.

“No, you’re not,” Evan said. “I saw your face when I got out of that taxi tonight. You’d made up your mind about me before you met me.”

“Jill suggested I watch your movies,” I said. “So I did – at least two of them.”

He sighed. “I can guess which two.” He stepped close, put his hand under my chin, and lifted it so I had to meet his gaze. “I’m not a monster, Joanne. I didn’t kill my wives.”

“You didn’t save them,” I said.

“They were beyond my reach.” Evan’s eyes bored into me. “I thought I was past the point where people could disappoint me, but you disappoint me, Joanne.”

Suddenly, I was furious. “What are you talking about? Why would you have any expectations about me one way or the other?”

“Because you sent Jill the illumination of that text by Philo of Alexandria.”

A flush of shame rose from my neck to my face. Evan’s lips curved in a smile. He had me. “I was looking forward to meeting the woman who believed those were words to live by.” He took a step towards me. “You do remember the words.”

Suddenly, I felt light-headed. I closed my eyes and nodded.

“Say them.” Evan’s tone was commanding.

“ ‘Be kind,’ ” I said mechanically, “ ‘for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.’ ”

“Good,” he said approvingly. “Now why don’t you make some effort to understand the battles I’m fighting.”

From the moment I’d read the article in the New York Times, I’d suspected Evan MacLeish was the wrong man for Jill. Now I was dead certain, and time was running out.

In our house, the dinner table had always been the place where people came to learn things. That night, as we gathered in the candlelight, I was desperate to learn something that would penetrate Jill’s wilful blindness about the man she was about to marry. Discovering who among my guests had the silver bullet would be problem enough. Convincing myself that I had the right to use it would be even more difficult. Jill was an intelligent woman who had assessed a complex situation and made a decision. It was going to be a stretch coming up with a rationale for interfering in her life.

I was glad Felix Schiff had sorted out the luggage problems and joined the party. He was an appealing guest, affable and fine-tuned to nuance. Like many men who work in media, Felix had adopted the man-boy costume of leather jacket and blue jeans, and the combination worked well for him. Looking at his unruly shock of chestnut hair and anxious grey eyes, it was easy to see the tightly wound child he had been. Industry colleagues knew Felix to be one tough cookie, but that night his sensitivity was apparent. He prided himself on being, in a phrase from his native Germany, ein prakiter Mensch. Faced with a party ripped by tension, the practical man ratcheted up the charm. Radiating the innocent shine of a Norman Rockwell schoolboy with a frog in his pocket, he surveyed the table.

“And to think, none of us would be here tonight if it weren’t for a water-skiing squirrel,” he said, eyeing his fellow guests to see if he’d hooked his audience. He had, and as people leaned forward with expectant half-smiles, eager to follow the anecdote, I felt my nerves unknot.

Noticing that a tiny frown was crimping Bryn’s forehead, Felix whispered confidingly, “You’ll have to forgive Jill for holding out on you. I’m sure she simply wanted to protect you from the knowledge that she’s anti-squirrel.”

“Hang on,” Jill said. “This is my party, and I’ll tell my own story. And in my version, I behave valiantly. Here’s what really happened, Bryn. Felix and I were working on a show called ‘Canada Tonight.’ He was the executive producer in Toronto, and I was the network producer here in Regina. Everything was cool, including the ratings, so, of course, NationTV decided it needed a saviour.”

“A twenty-seven-year-old saviour,” Felix said. “Still paying off his student loans, and they put him in charge of the network’s news division. A wunderkind, they said. Some wunderkind. We’d been hearing the same mantra for ten years. Appeal to a new demographic: younger, edgier, more urban, more buzz.”

Jill rolled her eyes. “… shorter segments, less analysis, more happy talk…”

“And,” Felix intoned gravely, “more squirrels.”

“Right,” Jill sipped her wine. “More squirrels. Somehow our young genius in Toronto got wind of the fact that a cottager out here had taught a squirrel to water-ski. Now clearly the cottager was a baguette short of a picnic, but the wunderkind was enchanted. He ordered me to replace two minutes of our political panel with squirrel footage, and I refused.”

“Squirrel against woman,” Angus said.

“Right,” Jill said. “And no possibility of rapprochement. The squirrel was out on Echo Lake slapping the waves with his little custom-made skiis, and I was here in Regina clinging to my standards.”

“And you lost,” Taylor said.

Jill nodded in agreement. “And our twenty-seven-year-old genius meted out the worst punishment he could think of…”

“He banished you to Toronto!” Angus said.

“Precisely,” Jill said. “With the kind of task evil fairies hand out in fairy tales. He gave me six weeks to create a cheap, ethnically diverse, spiritually neutral show that would get a 7.8 share on Sunday mornings.”

“Absolutely impossible,” Felix said. “It was a matter of principle. Jill quit, and so did I.”

Jill dipped her index finger into the water in her glass and passed it through the flame of the candle in front of her. “Luckily, Felix and I are not risk-averse. And we were both dying to show that little snot-nose what talent and experience could do.”

“Thus, after only a dozen or so false starts, ‘Comforts of the Sun’ came into being.” Felix bowed his head modestly. “A simple premise but brilliantly executed.”

We all laughed, but the truth of the matter was the premise behind “Comforts of the Sun” was simple: Jill and a small film crew followed ordinary people as they revelled in the pleasures of their Sunday morning. The show cast its net broadly: an all-girl skateboarders’ club in Sault Ste. Marie; a rafter-rattling gospel choir in Halifax; the owners of a trendy lesbian eatery called Tomboy who opened their doors on Sunday mornings to the homeless of Winnipeg; a Tai Chi group who, for three generations, had been harmonizing their minds and bodies in a Vancouver park; an octogenarian Anglican minister who, accompanied by his bulldog Balthazar, drove up and down the Sunshine Coast delivering thumping good sermons to anyone who was of a mind to sit still and listen.

As we passed the wild rice, we talked about why the show had struck a chord with so many people. “I’ll bet most people are like me,” I said. “We watch ‘Comforts of the Sun’ because it makes us feel good.”

Felix furrowed his brow. “Feel good is yesterday, Jo. When I was pitching the show in NYC, I talked about urban alienation, fragmentation, and the human need for connection and affirmation.”

Claudia snapped her fingers at an imaginary waiter. “Another order of bullshit for the gent here at table three,” she said, and her laughter was full-bodied and infectious.