Gail Bowen: The Endless Knot

“I imagine that will be the defence,” I said.

Ed raised an eyebrow. “Pillow talk?”

I shook my head. “Just a guess. Zack and I don’t talk about the case.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. Zack puts in punishing hours. These days the only way we can manage time together is if I meet him at the fitness centre in his apartment building.”

“That sounds wholesome.”

“And necessary,” I said. “Zack’s in that wheelchair eighteen hours a day. There are times when he’s in a lot of pain. Exercise helps, so we work out and afterwards we wipe the sweat off one another and go for ice cream.”

“Very domestic.”

“We have a lot of fun together. I just wish everyone who draws breath didn’t feel compelled to warn me against him.”

“They’re trying to protect you, Jo. Zachary Shreve is the lawyer of choice for the rich and dodgy, and he’s got a sensational track record. Guilty or not, he gets them off. I guess your friends just thought you’d end up with someone a little more like …” Ed threw his hands up in frustration.

“A little more like the gent in the Werther’s ad,” I said. “Sitting in his sweater coat, chatting with his grandson about the tradition of candy?”

Ed chuckled. “Hard to imagine Zack doing that.”

“You know him?”

“We’ve met. He came to my senior journalism seminar once. He was riveting. He talked about criminal law as a prize fight.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. In his office, he has an autographed photo of Muhammad Ali in his moment of triumph over Sonny Liston.”

“May 25, 1965,” Ed said.

“Good Lord. How did you know that?”

Ed sniffed theatrically. “Being gay doesn’t cut me off from the manly arts. And the parallel Zack drew between the ring and the courtroom made sense. He said that in boxing, for every bout that ends with a knockout punch, there are ninety-nine decided on feints and small, well-placed blows. According to him, it’s the same in a courtroom.”

“ ‘Float like a butterfly. Sting like a bee.’ ”

“Zack’s quote from Ali was less poetic. ‘It’s just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.’ ”

“That’s succinct.”

“And menacing. Of course, the kids loved your boyfriend.”

“But you didn’t.”

“To be frank, I found him chilling. I had a sense that if he was in the middle of a trial and someone told him he had to swap cases with the Crown, he’d keep arguing without missing a beat.”

“That could be seen as the mark of the professional,” I said.

“It could,” Ed agreed. “It could also be seen as the mark of a hired gun. Jo, your new friend moves in dangerous circles.”

It was a rumour I’d heard before, and I didn’t attempt to hide the asperity in my voice. “Zack doesn’t ‘move in dangerous circles,’ Ed. He defends people who find themselves in dangerous circumstances. There’s a distinction.”

Ed sighed heavily. “Now I’ve hurt your feelings.” He placed a plump, perfectly tended hand on mine. “I know I’m like a mother hen with you. It’s just that, in my opinion, you deserve the best.”

I covered Ed’s hand with my own. “I’ve found it,” I said. “Now let’s talk about Thanksgiving.”

“Still adept at steering the conversation back into safe harbours, I see. So, are you having a houseful?”

“Actually, a couple of houses full,” I said. “The granddaughters will be there as will all the kids, except Angus and his girlfriend, Leah. Leah’s aunt, the famous Slava, is taking them to New York to see a performance of Nixon in China.”

Ed’s eyes widened. “The only thing more unlikely than Nixon in China is Angus at the opera. Anyway, good for Slava. Angus needs to learn that not all of life’s pleasures involve an athletic supporter.”

I laughed. “Couldn’t agree with you more. But he and Leah will be missed. We’re going out to the lake.”

“With the new beau?”

“He owns the cottage – or at least one of them. How about you?”

“Barry and I have been invited to dine with friends. For the first time in my adult life, I’m not cooking a turkey.”

“Freedom,” I said.

“But no leftovers.” Ed’s moon face registered genuine regret. “Kris Kristofferson was right. Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.”

When I went into the Faculty Club kitchen to pick up my order, I asked Terry, the cook, to add two slices of pumpkin cheesecake. Then, bag lunches in hand, I headed off to meet my Prince of Darkness.

The offices of Falconer, Shreve, Altieri, and Wainberg occupied restored twin heritage houses in the city centre. Surrounded by numbingly generic apartment buildings and shops catering to those who yearned to learn the secrets of stained-glass making or Wicca or iridology, the Falconer Shreve offices had the starchy charm of genteel sisters growing old together in a world that had passed them by. Both buildings had well-tended lawns and round iron planters filled with jumbo gold and rust chrysanthemums. Both had discrete brass plates on their front doors bearing the firm’s name in letters that were neither too large nor too small, but just right. Both had ramps to accommodate Zack, who had been a paraplegic since a childhood accident.

In the months Zack and I had been seeing each other, I’d occasionally met him at his office. Like all high-powered law firms, Falconer Shreve was driven by the maxim that those who didn’t keep up got left behind. There was always a hum in the air, but that Friday afternoon the hum had reached fever pitch. Denise-Dee Kaiswatum, the receptionist, was involved in a heated dispute with a courier, but she came up for air long enough to roll her eyes and point a manicured nail towards the office of Norine MacDonald, Zack’s executive assistant, who with Cerberus-like zeal guarded the door to the clients’ room. Norine told me she’d let me know when Zack was free and to make myself comfortable.

There are few agreeable reasons to be in a lawyer’s office, but Zack’s clients’ room was designed to reassure the anxious. The walls were painted a comforting forest green and the furnishings were timeless antiques whose burnished sheen suggested that whatever follies humans contrived, there would always be Windsor chairs to receive their sorry asses and glowing coffee tables on which they could leave their mark. Left to my own devices, I settled in with the morning paper. I had ploughed through the news and sports and reached the Review section when Glenda Parker came out of Zack’s office. In her ribbed turtleneck, jeans, and hiking boots, she appeared as androgynous as most university kids. Like many female students, Glenda eschewed makeup, and that year the style in which she wore her cornsilk hair – side-parted and cut short except for a long sleek bang, was favoured by half the young men and women on campus. There was nothing noteworthy about Glenda, except for the fact that every Canadian with access to a remote control had seen footage of her in her previous incarnation as an Olympic-calibre swimmer who competed as a male.

The footage had been shot at a swim meet two years before the publication of Too Much Hope . Intended only as a record of a few moments in an athlete’s life, the close-up was used as an illustration in Kathryn Morrissey’s book. After Sam Parker had been charged with attempted murder, the photo of Glenda, unmistakably male with shaved chest bare and genitals outlined by a Speedo brief, had appeared in every newspaper in Canada. The image was indelible, and as Norine introduced Glenda, I found myself searching for the boy in the swimsuit in the gentle young woman extending her hand to me.

We exchanged the usual pleasantries of people meeting for the first time. Glenda’s voice was an agreeable contralto, but she spoke with the care of someone learning a new language. In Too Much Hope , she had confided to Kathryn that one of the early tasks of transitioning genders was acquiring the voice of the other. Physical change, she explained, was only one stop on the transsexual road map. As I looked at Glenda, I was struck by how young she was – just twenty – but the pink-purple shadows beneath her eyes suggested that, for her, the path to self-realization had been riddled with land mines.