Margaret Atwood - Hag-Seed

The treacherous old geezer. Felix did not deign to glance at him.

Shuffle shuffle, waddle waddle, splish splash through the puddles, up came fat Lonnie, wheezing like a walrus. “I’m really sorry, Felix,” he said when he was level with the back of the car.

“In a pig’s ear,” said Felix.

“It wasn’t me,” Lonnie said dolefully. “I was outvoted.”

“Horse pookey,” said Felix. The stick was his fox-head cane; the dead cat was his false Prospero beard; the skunk item, he saw now, was his magic garment. What would have been his magic garment. It was damp, the fur bedraggled. Its many plastic animal eyes gazed beadily out at him through the fur, its many tails drooped. In the gray light of day it looked stupid. But onstage, finished, interwoven with foliage, spray-painted with gold accents, highlighted with sequins, it would have been splendid.

“I’m unhappy you feel like that,” said Lonnie. “I thought you might want to have these.” He thrust the cape, the beard, and the walking stick at Felix, who kept his hands by his sides and simply glared. There was an awkward moment. Lonnie was truly distressed: he was a sentimental old coot, he cried at the end of tragedies. “Please,” he said. “As a memento. After all your work.” He held out the items again. The black security guard took them from him and crammed them in on top of the boxes.

“You needn’t have bothered,” said Felix.

“And this,” said Lonnie, holding out the plastic bag. “It’s your script. For The Tempest . With your notes. I took the liberty of looking at…it would have been wonderful,” he went on, his voice quavering. “Maybe this will come in handy sometime.”

“You’re hallucinating,” said Felix. “You and that cesspool, Tony, have ruined my career, and you know it. You might as well have taken me out and shot me.” This was an exaggeration, but it was also a relief for Felix to be able to rub someone else’s nose in his own misery. Someone with a soft heart and a weak spine and therefore susceptible to nose-rubbing, unlike Tony.

“Oh, I’m sure everything will work out for you,” said Lonnie. “After all, such creativity, such talent…There must be a lot of, well, other places…A new start…”

“Other places?” said Felix. “I’m fifty, for cripes’ sake. Past the sell-by date for new starts, wouldn’t you say?”

Lonnie gulped. “I do see what you…We’ll be moving a vote of thanks to you at the next Board meeting, and there’s a proposal for a statue, you know, like, a bust, or maybe a fountain, in your name…”

Creativity. Talent. The two most overused words in the business, Felix thought bitterly. And the three most useless things in the world: a priest’s cock, a nun’s tits, and a heartfelt vote of thanks. “Stuff your bust,” he said. But then he relented. “Thanks, Lonnie,” he said. “I realize you mean well.” He stuck out his hand. Lonnie shook it.

Was that actually a tear, rolling down the too-red cheek? Was that a quiver of the jowl? Lonnie should watch his ass with Tony at the helm, thought Felix. Especially if he keeps displaying such blubbery compunction. Tony would have no qualms; he’d crush any opposition, punish any hesitation, surround himself with thugs, lop off the deadwood.

“Any time you need a recommendation,” said Lonnie. “I’d be happy to…or…I understand there’s a…maybe after a rest…You’ve been working too hard, ever since your, your terribly sad, I was so sorry, it’s way been too much, no one should have to…”

Lonnie had been at the funeral; at both funerals, Nadia’s first. He’d been very upset about Miranda. He’d thrown a little bouquet of pink tea roses into the tiny grave, rather theatrically Felix had thought at the time, though he’d appreciated the gesture. Then Lonnie had broken down entirely, hiccupping into a white handkerchief as big as a tablecloth.

Tony had been at the funeral too, the sneaky rat, in a dark tie and a mourning face, though he must have been perfecting his coup even then.

“Thanks,” said Felix again, cutting Lonnie short. “I’ll be fine. And thanks,” he said to the two Security men. “You’ve been helpful. I appreciate it.”

“Drive safe, Mr. Phillips,” said one of them.

“Yeah,” said the other. “We’re just doin’ our job.” It was an apology of sorts. They probably knew what it was like to get fired.

Then Felix climbed into his unsatisfactory car and drove out of the parking lot, into the rest of his life.

The rest of his life. How long that time had once felt to him. How quickly it has sped by. How much of it has been wasted. How soon it will be over.

Leaving the Festival parking lot, Felix didn’t have the sensation of driving. Instead he felt he was being driven, as if blown by a high wind. He was cold, although by this time the drizzle had stopped and the sun was shining, and also he had the heat turned on. Was he in shock? No: he wasn’t shivering. He was calm.

The theatre, with its fluttering pennants and water-spewing dolphin fountain and outdoor patio and landscaped floral surroundings and festive ice-cream-licking playgoers, soon vanished. The main street of Makeshiweg, with its pricey restaurants and its pubs ornamented with the heads of archaic poets and pigs and Renaissance queens and frogs and gnomes and roosters, and its Celtic woollen-goods outlets and Inuit carving shops and English china boutiques, and then its handsome Victorian yellow brick houses with their occasional bed-and-breakfast signs, petered out into a string of drugstores and shoe repairs and Thai nail bars. Then, after a few more traffic lights, the carpet outlet warehouses and the Mexican food joints and the hamburger heavens of the strip mall on the outskirts were also left behind, and Felix was adrift.

Where was he? He had no idea. All around him stretched rolling fields, the tender green of spring wheat, the darker green of soybeans. Islands of trees extruded their feathery or glistening leaves around the century-old farmhouses, their gray wooden barns still serviceable, their silos punctuating the horizontals. The road was gravel now, and not in good repair.

He slowed down, looked around him. He longed for a den, a hidey-hole, a place where he knew no one and no one knew him. A retreat where he could recuperate, for now he was beginning to acknowledge to himself how badly he was wounded.

In a day or two, three at the most, Tony would plant some lying story in the newspapers. It would say that Felix had resigned as Artistic Director to pursue other opportunities, but nobody would believe that version. If he stayed in Makeshiweg, ill-intentioned reporters would sniff him out, relishing the fall of the mighty one. They’d phone him, lurk in ambush, corner him in one of the town bars, supposing he was foolish enough to go into one. They’d ask him if he cared to comment, hoping to provoke some yelling from him, considering his irascible reputation. But yelling would be a waste of breath, for what would it accomplish?

The sun was declining; its light slanted, grew yellower. How long had he been out here? Wherever here was. He drove on.

At some distance from the road, at the end of a disused laneway, there was an odd structure. It looked as if it had been built into a low hillside, enclosed by the earth with only its front wall showing. It had one window, and a door standing agape. There was a metal chimney pipe protruding from the wall, then elbowing upward, with a tin cap on the top. There was a clothesline, with a single clothespin still gripping a scrap of dishcloth. It was the last place anyone would expect Felix to land.