to retain some dignity in the negotiations and pretend that my compliance is worth significant payment in kind.
“I’m meeting Sylvia for dinner — “ “God, how’s she doing?” “Not great.” I veered away from details, mainly because I didn’t want to confront them earlier than I had to. “I’ve got her doing a search on this, so I’ll have a lot more background by tonight.”
“Keep me posted.” “I will. And Duncan, keep your nose clean, but not that clean.”
The Winnipeg-Vancouver leg of the voyage was more exciting, with an inflight movie and Angela. I watched her manoeuvre her bags down the aisle, feeling dread, then resignation, as she stopped at my row, smiled, and said, “Hi there. Jeez. They don’t give you much room, do they?”
She had more carry-on luggage than a hockey team, mainly shopping bags from Eaton’s, The Bay, and Holt Renfrew. She dumped all her bags on the seat and stood in the aisle, surveying the situation and blocking all the traffic behind her. She looked a bit like a middle-aged cherub, or how one would imagine cherubim would look if they ever aged to forty. But instead of fair hair, hers was jet black and cut in short, stylish waves that framed her face. She was dressed casually, but the jeans were designer, the neon yellow sweatshirt was new, and the cowboy boots looked like they came from an endangered species. Someone in the queue behind finally got annoyed and gave a firm shove, which travelled down the line to her.
“Oh, sorry,” she said, looking back, and wedged herself into that tiny space in front of the seat to let the others pass.
Having adjusted to my fate, I tried to be kind. “I can fit a bag in front of my seat. All I have down here is a briefcase.”
“Gee, thanks a bunch,” and she swung two bags in my direction. I arranged them as best I could, then sat up and took a good look at her. She had pulled out a compact and was patting her hair into place. I couldn’t help asking, “You go to Winnipeg to shop? It seems a bit bizarre, coming from Vancouver.”
“Oh, I don’t live in Vancouver. Ellesworth.” She snapped the compact shut and took in my blank stare. “Above Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island. And I got to tell you anyway, Vancouver’s not so hot. I’d rather shop in Winnipeg any day. Sorry if that offends you.” She didn’t sound sorry.
“I’m not from Vancouver. Ottawa, actually.”
A shadow of loathing crossed her face, and she shifted to the other side of her seat. “Really.”
“But I used to live in Vancouver when I was a kid,” I said quickly. “And I went to university in Winnipeg.” She relaxed a bit and moved back toward the centre of her seat. Apparently, with that pedigree whatever I had wasn’t contagious. I finished up lamely, “So I’m not really an Ottawa person, if you know what I mean.”
“Where I come from we don’t have much good to say about Ottawa, if you know what I mean.”
I did, so I let a second pass before changing the topic. “So, what brought you to Winnipeg?”
“Oh, my mum. Jeez, I wish she’d move west where I could keep an eye on her, but you know how old people are. ‘Winnipeg’s been good to me my whole life,’ she says. ‘I’m not going to abandon it now.’ Like Winnipeg cares. Well, that’s fine for her, but my George has to work, and he can’t do that in Winnipeg.”
“But he can in Ellesworth?” “Logging. He runs a feller operation on the blocks above Campbell River. On a good day on flat terrain he can take down four hundred trees. Makes a good living.” She reflexively held out her hand and examined the two chunks of diamond-encrusted gold on her fingers. Together they must have weighed more than a fork. The funny thing was, she wasn’t doing it to impress me. It was as though she was trying to remind herself that these were the benefits of all their hard work.
“You must worry about him. It’s a dangerous job.” She shrugged and switched on a smile. “What can you do? It’s not so bad really.”
“And with the way things are going —” I was stopped by her frank, appraising, and not very friendly look.
“You people in Ottawa think we’re all stupid, don’t you? Well for your information, there isn’t a man working out in that forest who doesn’t know what’s going on. What do you think they talk about over beer? They know we can’t keep cutting like that and still have a forest for my son to work in, but what are you supposed to do? Get out? So somebody else can make the money instead of you? We worked hard to set ourselves up, and every year we got to upgrade equipment and cut more trees just to make ends meet. The forest will be gone no matter what we do, so we might as well make the money out of it. Anyway, you know whose fault it really is?”
At this point she directed her index finger at me and gave me a good, sharp poke in the arm. It hurt, particularly with those acrylic nails. “The government. That’s who. They let in those foreign companies who strip the land, don’t reforest, then send the logs to their own countries for processing. Those are our jobs. If the government would keep their nose out of it,” she poked me again, “we’d run the industry like it should be run.”
I was tempted to remind her that forestry was within the provincial jurisdiction so she was poking the wrong person, but it probably wouldn’t have mattered to her. Government is government and they’re all bad. I rubbed my arm and mumbled something about getting the point, then the lights dimmed and the movie started: Free Willy 3. I wondered how she felt about that.
As we approached Vancouver, the sun was sitting low over Vancouver Island across the Strait of Georgia. Vancouver’s airport spreads across a marshy island in the Fraser River delta, and as we neared the city the plane came in low over the river, following it out to its mouth. Beneath us, tug boats, seiners, and log booms moved sluggishly along the channel while yachts and pleasure craft darted between them. From above, the Fraser looked like nothing more than a vast aquatic highway.
Then suddenly the land dropped away and we shot out over open water, banking sharply to make our final descent. As the plane tilted, the clean line of demarcation — where the muddy Fraser hits the clear, cold waters of the Strait of Georgia — was visible below. The mass of flowing water created a solid, murky wall that ran several miles out, and fishing boats dotted either side of the line.
As we taxied into the airport I wished Angela luck with her mother, grabbed my briefcase and my carry-on bag, and slipped out of the seat before we’d come to a stop. It was going to take her at least half an hour to gather up the fruits of her labour.
For me, Vancouver equals pain, but even so I can’t help but be seduced by the overpowering beauty: the city cradled by snowy mountains against a shimmering sea. I stood for a moment, breathing in the damp, salty air, remembering, and not remembering. When I was ready to move, I crossed to the rental lot, where I picked up my government-rate car: basically, a tin can powered by a blender engine, set on wheels the size of Oreo cookies. If this case involved a high-speed chase I was already dead. I consulted the map, just to refresh my memory, and headed into the city.
As I crossed the north arm of the river, I caught the scent of fresh-cut cedar, pungent and aromatic, escaping from a sawmill below. For a moment I was displaced, no longer in a car speeding toward the city but standing in a moist, dark glade dwarfed by towering trees. Then the car cleared the rise of the bridge and my eyes were assaulted by straight lines and concrete grey. I sighed, jammed my foot on the gas, and descended into the urban sprawl.
For once, someone in Travel had done their job. Instead of booking me into a downtown hotel, which would be more expensive
