“Virgin.”
“I’m a virgin. Technically. You know what I mean.”
“I can imagine. You’re drunk. But very pretty.”
Morgan was bewildered. No one had called him pretty before. He didn’t know whether to be flattered or insulted. He decided flattery was preferable. “You’re very pretty, too. Do you want to take me home?”
She did, and that was the beginning of Morgan’s first affair, which after ten days burned out because they had nothing to say to each other. She taught him about a woman’s body as if she were much older, and he felt secure enough that he learned with awkward enthusiasm more than he could have imagined and far less than he needed to be a good lover. It didn’t occur to him to resent her experience.
Their last night together, after she finished the late shift and before he went to his morning class, they both knew their relationship had run its course. In a gesture to make the finality of their parting less certain, he invited her to a lecture he would be giving in two months.
“What are you talking about?” she asked him.
“It’s by invitation. My philosophy prof asked me to speak at a graduate seminar. It’s a big deal. They don’t usually let undergraduates speak.”
“What’s it gonna be about?”
“Heidegger …”
She smiled benignly, drawing him to her. “You really are sweet.”
A couple of months later he stepped up to the podium in a lecture hall at the university before anyone else was in the room. His topic had aroused considerable interest, and Father Harris, his professor, had asked if he would mind opening his presentation to a larger audience. Morgan was thrilled. He looked out across the rows of empty seats. He wasn’t at all nervous. He was sure of his material and confident of his ability to deliver. This was a prelude, he thought, to a career in the professorial ranks.
Father Harris came in and chatted with him. A few students entered and gathered in clusters toward the back of the room.
“It’s always this way,” Father Harris assured him. “Lecture halls fill up from the back.” Father Harris was enough to make Morgan want to be Catholic, even though he was already agnostic.
Morgan glanced up the aisle as a flash of brilliant red appeared at the back of the hall. He looked away, then back again. It was Donna, and she was dressed for a party. She waved and manoeuvred precariously on stiletto heels down the incline to where he was standing with the lectern between them. He stared at her with his mouth open, completely thrown. Father Harris reached out his hand and introduced himself. Donna smiled a huge red smile and curtsied slightly. She had never before talked to a priest.
Struggling to regain his composure, Morgan was too flustered to say anything. Donna leaned around the lectern and kissed him on the cheek. The scoop neck of her dress gaped open. He could feel the smudge of her lipstick like a scarlet letter glowing on his skin as she moved slightly away, being uncertain of the protocol such an occasion demanded.
“I’m proud of you,” she said.
Father Harris took her arm in a proprietorial way, bowing slightly. He smiled at her as if she were an old friend of the family. She gazed up at him and smiled her red smile, and turned and smiled at Morgan. Her eyes dazzled blue in the lights of the hall.
“Won’t you join me, Donna?” asked Father Harris. “We’ll just give David a few moments. Even the most experienced of us gets a little anxious before giving an important lecture.” He led her to a seat beside his own, making a clear and subtle show to the audience who had understood in the last few minutes that she was his guest.
The presentation was well received and led indirectly to the offer of a scholarship to do graduate work. At the informal reception following his lecture, Father Harris kept Donna by his side, and when the evening began to subside, he called her a taxi and paid the driver in advance. As she was going out the door, she turned to catch Morgan’s eye and mouthed the words “Thank you” with her full red lips as if it were the best day of her life.
Morgan was ashamed of himself for weeks afterward and went off to plant trees, then on to his adventure in Europe, without picking up his degree.
Donna, he thought now, whatever happened to you? As he stirred uneasily in the embrace of the wingback chair in Griffin’s house, he imagined Donna’s big red lips and blue eyes and blond mane of hair with its dark roots surrounding her oval face, and he felt wistful, knowing she would never have thought he had done anything wrong.
Abruptly, Morgan rose to his feet, breaking the bond between himself and the residual personality of Robert Griffin, leaving memories of Donna behind.
Morgan leaned over the ceramic box to examine an old board with worn edges, placed alongside it with casual artifice as if the owner were trying to subvert its value. He ran his hand lightly over the etched surface, feeling the hieroglyphs with his fingers.
So that was what half a million felt like, what words felt like when their meaning wasn’t known.
Morgan sat down again, feeling queasy. What was he doing here? he thought in Miranda’s voice. He hated when the words in his head seemed to come from her. Morgan got up and puttered around the room. He needed to know this man if he was to understand his death. He needed to distance himself.
Feelings of ambivalence toward Griffin bothered Morgan. He was better with ambiguity. Ambivalence demanded choice, and he preferred hovering between.
That was how Miranda understood him, how she explained his mind. He suspected this was a projection of how she saw herself. It didn’t cross his mind that he saw himself reflected in her.
They had been together for more than a decade. They fitted together like long-time lovers who were afraid if they ever got married the vital uncertainty between them would dissipate and they would lose their separate identities.
Both of them had a poor view of marriage, Morgan from limited experience and Miranda by extrapolation from all the constrictions she thought she could see in the lives of friends and in the smug, dreary life of her sister in Vancouver. Morgan feared what he knew and Miranda what she knew nothing about.
Their first case working together had been a grisly execution. When he saw her walk through the door at the crime scene, an unconventionally pretty young woman with a steely look in her eyes, he had been surprised. He was never quite sure why.
“Where did you come from?” he had said. “I just finished doing federal time.” Since that got no reaction, she added, “RCMP, Ottawa.”
“I don’t need a personal history. Do you ride?”
“Horses? Had to learn.”
“Did you like it?” he asked.
“Being mounted?”
They exchanged glances, and that was the last time in her life Miranda tried to be one of the boys.
“Do you like horses?” he asked, not because he was interested but to get them over the hump.
“I didn’t try out for the Musical Ride if that’s what
