“Everything all right?” Feeney says.
“Where were you?” Harris replies, his voice ragged, not his own. “You know I hate dining alone. A vile con man approached me and I had to send him packing.”
“Poor baby,” Feeney says. “But I found our Rockefeller. In a cloud of cigar smoke on the balcony.”
“What took you so long?”
“I was arranging a chat between you two later this evening. Following the entertainment.”
“Oh, I’m sure you enjoyed that,” Harris says. “And get me some more of this champagne, will you? I’ve acquired a taste for it.”
“I doubt that’s a good idea,” Feeney says, pressing a glass into Harris’s hand, in which he’s disappointed to discover seltzer.
“Then escort me to the men’s room,” Harris says amid a sudden wave of nausea brought on by the lingering taste of clams. “That’s an order.” Harris rises from his chair, dragging Feeney behind him, roughly bumping guests as they go. In the stall of the water closet, the nausea dissipates and Harris finds that alcohol has dampened his anxieties concerning their discovery, so he seeks out his describer’s lips and presses them to his own. Feeney tastes of cucumber and tea and cedar shavings.
“I won’t be in any shape to meet Rockefeller later,” Harris declares while washing up at the basin following their intimacies. “So I’m going to proposition him now.”
“Harris, you need to quit this idiocy. Or you and your childish behaviour will derail everything.”
“That wasn’t a request, Liam. And I can still manage quite capably without you,” Harris says, fumbling around until he exits the lavatory, brushing his open hand along the hotel’s velvet walls for both direction and balance. He can hear Feeney trailing at his heels, quietly urging him to reconsider. In the dining area, Harris commands a waiter to escort him to the balcony.
“Mr. Rockefeller,” Harris bellows affably when the cool, cigar-tinged night air touches his face.
“Mr. Greenwood! There you are,” says a warm and resonant voice with an East Coast accent that reminds Harris of his years at Yale. They shake hands, and while Rockefeller’s hand is soft and uncallused, he counters Harris’s strong squeeze with an equally strong one of his own.
“We were just discussing the deal you’ve cut with those yellow howler monkeys,” Rockefeller says, with the slight slur of a man standing on the doorstep of inebriation but yet to step inside. As he speaks, Rockefeller pats Harris on the back of his jacket.
“I sell wood to anyone,” Harris declares with a grin. “Regardless of their zoological heritage.”
“Well said, well said.” Rockefeller pats him again, this time on the neck, as if he were a trusted retriever, and Harris nearly bats the hand away. “But respectfully, Mr. Greenwood, we’re of the opinion that we ought not be aiding these Japs. They’ve invaded Manchuria. And rumours are circulating back at the Capitol that the United States is next.”
“You’ve ceased all your Japanese oil shipments, then, I presume?” Harris says, pausing to let the barb sink deeper, then smiling to mitigate it. “They need a railroad, Mr. Rockefeller. And I’m providing them the lumber to construct one. What they do with it isn’t my concern. I’ve already cut half of the sleepers, and all I need is a bit more acreage to supply the remainder.”
“I already know this, Mr. Greenwood. And as I informed your agent, I will lease you cutting rights, nothing more. Though this time around it seems like there could be some competition from your colleague, Mr. MacMillan. Of course, I will gladly accept bids from you both.”
“That won’t do,” Harris says. “I’m seeking full title.”
“Mr. Greenwood, it seems to me that this charming nation of yours is just one gigantic set of woods. So why don’t you muster up some initiative and go and purchase some other portion of it?”
Ever since his boyhood days of haggling over the price of firewood by the side of McLaren Road, Harris has felt most himself during a negotiation. So he drains his glass and directs his eyes to where he suspects Rockefeller’s are. “Sir, I’ve paid you a tidy sum in leases over the years, and I’ve been happy to do it. But this time, I need to purchase your Port Alberni escarpment, including its attached islands. Full title.”
“And as I said, that land is not something I’d care to sell, Mr. Greenwood. These aren’t the old days. They aren’t manufacturing any more islands any time soon, the last I checked.”
“This is a mere morsel to a man of your holdings, Mr. Rockefeller. You won’t miss it for a second.”
“It’s a fine party, Mr. Greenwood,” Rockefeller says. “But I’ve been subject to your sales pitch for long enough. Good evening.”
Harris turns and braces himself at the balcony railing as the men snicker at his expense, just as they had at Yale. How they shook his hand publicly and spurned him privately, more for being a backwater Canadian than for his blindness. To men like Rockefeller, this country—the greatest storehouse of natural materials the world has ever known, first stolen from the Natives, then sold off bit by bit to foreign interests like him—has always been just a place for them to tear things out of. And for a dizzy, drunken moment, Harris pities the trees. Especially for the trusting way they declare themselves to the world with their grand upward reach. At least gold and oil have the common sense to hide.
Still, without more trees to cut, Greenwood Timber will fail, and Harris and Feeney will be left as unprotected as those two swampers found embracing at his lumber camp. A sudden and renewed ferocity circulates through him, and with it a memory of Feeney mentioning that Rockefeller had been a competitive rower in college.
“Sir, these are trees you’ve never seen,” Harris calls out in the direction of the cigar smoke. “Growing in a part of the world you’ll never visit.”
“Greenwood, are you deaf in addition to blind?” Rockefeller asks. “Or simply dim-witted enough to think that just because you’ve thrown a party, you’ll set the terms here?”
Harris ignores the insult and closes the gap between them, cuffing the solid bicep beneath Rockefeller’s silk jacket. “Oh, come on, John!” Harris says with tense joviality. “Even though I cut the wood that made the railway you rode here on, and the mansion you live in, and the books your nannies read to your children, and the stocks of the guns that won your wars, and every stick of furniture you ever sat upon, I’ll still never be your equal, will I? So how about you arm wrestle this helpless, backwoods invalid, and prove your superiority right here in front of everyone? If I win, you sell me that Port Alberni parcel, with its attached islands, at reasonable terms. And if you do, I’ll cancel my deal with the dreaded Japs and you and your nation will be safe once more. What do you say, sport?”
HER BEDROOM
TWO BLUE EYES, another nose, another mouth, an array of pearly teeth, all hovering there above him, inches from his own. “It’s been years since I’ve been watched up close like this,” Everett whispers.
Temple laughs and he worries for a moment she’s pegged him as simple. “Well, it’s about time someone got near you,” she whispers back, lowering herself down against him, her breath electric against his neck. “You’ve been on your own too long.”