Still Life with Insects by Brian Kiteley

Author:Brian Kiteley [Kiteley, Brian; Cohen, Leah Hager]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781619026506
Publisher: Catapult

At one point a vice-president, who made it quite plain he was angling to depose the president, began to dance with him. Everyone in the private room at the restaurant put down their drinks and stopped talking. I was the only non-executive at the party, a fact turned over in conversation all night long. “How did Farmer slip through?” “Are you taking good notes?” Seth Thomson, the president, had always liked me, though in an absent-minded way that often made me feel liked for elusive reasons which if pinned down would probably not fit me at all. The evening was in honor of Carton, who had been Thomson’s sidekick for thirty years. During the first toast, Carton joked uneasily that this was more like a wake than a celebration. The mood had been quite festive, but in Carton’s inadvertently penetrating manner he described the underlying tone. The rumor was that Thomson would be asked to retire in a matter of weeks.

The dancing began as an obvious effort by a new man from Toronto to ridicule Thomson, who had become drunk very quickly. But McHenry and Thomson discovered they enjoyed the exercise and made the accordion player speed up his waltz, and soon eight blue-suited couples were marching across the floor, bumping, falling, laughing like schoolboys.

I sat exempt from the dancing and chatted with Carton. The celebration was clearly something of a joke on him, but Thomson’s affection for Carton was also genuine, the product of thirty years of shared memories. I think this was why no one tried to drag Carton onto the dance floor. But he winced each time a dancer grabbed one of our neighbors.

My own immunity from the dancing may have been the result of an unhappy incident early in the evening. Roaring like a bear, Thomson tried to make me drink a big mug full of beer. A crony stood behind me, laughingly holding back my arms. I said something sharp, I don’t remember what, and Thomson’s face fell. “Only a bit of pleasantry, Professor,” he muttered. Carton had first used that nickname on me, although he was the one who deserved it, with his Ph.D. in agriculture. Carton told me later the boys were surprised to see how tough I could be on the president. As the night progressed, Thomson began calling me his “wet nurse.” I believe it was during the dancing that I phoned my wife. She had already taken her sleeping pill. She was distantly amused by my descriptions and unperturbed that I might be home very late. “You just keep your flock in line,” she said.

The maitre d’ supervised the skeleton staff of waiters and therefore suffered a good deal of harassment. “Jean,” someone would shout, pronouncing the name the American way. “Gene, get over here with that American bourbon” (he was not the Jean of Chez Jean). Perhaps to vent his frustrations he turned off the air conditioning for a few minutes every half hour. I noticed this tactic when men began to exhale clouds of vapor after sucking down their cold drinks.

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