I had learned my lesson with Maria. It was lunch this time. My outfit was more casual, my pose more relaxed. The meal was cheaper, the establishment more cosy. It was, in fact, a restaurant that a relative of mine owned as close to the Rideau Canal as civil engineering would allow although the proprietor was distant enough to forget the family discount when I took the cheque. I was starting to feel a peculiar empathy with my mother who would beat her head against the liver paste section of the grocery store and shout, “food is too damn expensive” until I calmed her down. Of course my wallet wasn’t the subject of the meal, Claudine was, and a more interesting subject has yet to be found.

            She had returned my call more promptly than I had imagined, almost as if she had been waiting by the phone. There was of course the possibility that the number simply corresponded to a cellular device she carried on her person, but I preferred the romantic lie to the modern truth. She met me at the entrance at the precise moment the clock struck two with her heeled boots tapping against the pavement of the sidewalk in a rhythmic dance that put the ballet to shame. She fearlessly wore a red and black knitted scarf that had gone out of style years ago along with a coat that clearly was more invested in warmth than fashion. Claudine embodied practicality with just a slight hint of flair that was enough to keep me guessing. I don’t suppose I could have asked for much more.

            We took our seats near the window, watching the trepidatious skaters take their first steps on the newly formed ice not entirely certain if the frigid weather had managed to freeze the canal to the core or if it gave only the illusion of a solid surface. I felt Claudine and I were performing much the same act. A woman of her age must have gone on enough dates to have tasted the chef’s specialty in every restaurant from Victoria to St. John’s, but I had not and although I felt I was acting deftly enough to convince her of my experienced confidence, it was not translating into actual hubris. The late night has a loosening effect on tongues and works like alcohol on the brain. Action was easy; words weren’t a rare commodity. Now the jokes that had rolled from my lips and the quips and witty remarks that had come to my brain like a twin linked pipeline were running dry.

I settled into my chair and decided after only a slight glance of the menu that I was going to be having the chef’s salad as Claudine mulled over the steak sandwich or lobster special. My tongue was tied in knots a skilled sailor couldn’t untangle and my stomach was wrapping itself like a thick croissant pastry. I started worrying I was going to say the wrong thing. I was going to embarrass myself and make some stupid remark and then I’d be discovered. I’d be rushed out the restaurant crying and my date would be left on the sidewalk confused and alone, wondering why the world wasn’t right for her. My mind started wandering again and I wondered how Claudine would feel if she found out about me. Would she wonder if everything I had told her was a lie? Would she start questioning other aspects of her life? Would she live her life with her gaze over her shoulder, perpetually distrusting everyone who was lucky enough to drop into it?  I couldn’t do that to her; the secret had to be kept. I had to look natural. I released the tension in my shoulders and got into character.

“So,” I said, hoping that the awkward pause that followed it would fill with my words. It didn’t. Claudine looked expectantly; I flopped like a whale washed on the shore. “So, do you always introduce yourself to everyone by asking about the ‘Vinyl Cafe’?”

Claudine was surprised by the question, but she pushed her back and answered nonchalantly regardless. “Of course not. Sometimes I ask if they think Stephen Harper is having a gay love affair with George Bush.”

I nearly spit out my water. “How do you possibly attract clients?”

Claudine smiled, the edges of her face coming into a sinister grin. “There is the serious Claudine and there is the person Claudine, just like there is for everyone really. For most people, however, especially those of your profession, the two become almost inseparable until one day they realize the only books they’ve ever read are law books, they know more about common law than their own light fixtures and every friend they have in the world gets paid to speak to them. I’m not like that. I read for pleasure. I know how to screw in a light bulb. I know how to speak to people without legal problems. At least, I try to tell myself that. In reality, we’re all one crisis away from slipping into the mindless trap that is career, not a hope in hell of escape.”

For a moment I thought I was speaking to some sort of Cicero-Buddha-Jesus hybrid. My own thoughts were materializing and bouncing right back to me. She was the manifestation of everything I had ever believed or dreamt. Claudine was a philosopher, a poet, a warrior against society. She was everything I hoped to be but couldn’t, no compromises, no conformity, no confinement. I wanted to propose right then and there. It was only after I realized I had retreated to my thoughts and ignored her perplexed face that I resolved to return to character.

“But we were at a ball hosted by my law firm, Claudine?” I stated in puzzlement.

“You are wondering how I knew you weren’t a client, how you weren’t a colleague? Oh come, Mr. Samuzzo Mussini, I saw through you the instant I laid eyes on you.”

I gulped. Perhaps she had known all along. It was obvious. How could I have possibly pulled it off? I was only a sixteen year old kid living in a world carved out by the ancient for the elderly to sit. I didn’t understand the people of her generation any more than my own. My being disenfranchised by my time didn’t grant me admission to her own. I was simply astray, cast adrift on an endless ocean with nothing but a leaky raft. It would have been impossible for her not to notice I was drowning, even if I gave the impression I could swim.

“How did you know,” I asked, cowering, my façade shredded to its retched interior.

She smiled again, the glint in her emerald eyes still giving off such a gleam of mystery and knowledge that it was impossible not to wonder what laid behind them. “There are millions of men like you, Sam, just like there are thousands of actors. Some actors are more skilled than others. Some win Oscars, others win car commercials. Some can make an audience’s heart race, others can make them sleep like the dead. But there isn’t an actor in the world that can make me believe that there isn’t a camera behind the set, or a script being fed to them from stage right or a big, juicy pay cheque waiting in the make-up room. At most, an actor can suspend disbelief, and although no one can deny your skills in that area, Samuzzo, well, what can I say, a stunt man won’t ever get his name on the poster. Some things just are the way they are.”

“‘A rose by any other name would be as sweet,’” I said, utterly defeated.

The corner of her mouth lifted in appreciation. “And a good Shakespearean actor you were, but your suit was just a costume and your words were just a shield. That is why I introduced myself with something strange, so unanticipated; you had to go off script. Like dissolves like. Your words were supposed to collapse with mine and that was how I knew you were different.” She winked. “I’ve done it a thousand times, seen a man in a fancy suit and tie shake hands and wag tongues, make promises he can’t keep with money he doesn’t have and they all come tumbling down the instant you stop pandering to them. The second you refuse to worship at their Lego-built temple or grovel before their play dough statues, they fold on themselves like the void, empty vacuum of humanity they really are. Every man in that room had nothing but the respect of his peers. There were lawyers in there that make three hundred thousand a year and live paycheque to paycheque, case to case, overbilling to overbilling. But not you, Samuzzo Mussini, not for a second. You might not have had what you were selling, but you possessed far more than your buyers, a brain. What did I see in you that was so different? An original thought. Rather than just looking startled or joining the protective false compliments and empty gestures of your fellow ass-kissers, you called me out. Hell, you even insulted me. That’s when I knew you were different.”

“Different how?”

Claudine fiddled with her fork, absent mindedly. After a painful and enduring pause, she abruptly lifted her chin and stared me right in the eyes, her gaze piercing into my soul. “This is what I think of you, Samuzzo Mussini. I believe the premise, just not the joke. Of all the men who tried to sell their souls last night, I believe that yours came at the highest price. The cuffs of your trousers aren’t wrinkled and faded from the cramped quarters of peasant vehicle, so I’d say you have the nice car, maybe not the Ferrari you implied, but maybe a nice little Mustang or Cadillac hidden in the garage of your million dollar home. Your suit was tailored and although that alone means nothing, the way you wore it makes me think you have a closet of full of lesser copies at home, maybe even with a cute, little trophy wife to iron your polyester shirts in the morning. Your demeanor suggests a partnership; the truth speaks a more believable tale of senior associate, caught up in a large firm perpetually one big lawsuit away from promotion. You’re close to what you claim to be, much closer than any of the other sacrilegious messiahs and feeble-minded geniuses that follow you.”

She pulled closer, her cheek tucked tightly up against her fist on the table in an inquisitive gesture. “I saw it in the way you speak to those around you. You spoke to ministers and partners and ambassadors in a way that interpreted as camaraderie but I knew to be patronization. You were the father you promises to place his child’s crudely painted drawings on the refrigerator. You were the grandpa that tastes the disgusting kitchen experiment his grandchildren have produced and tells them it’s ambrosia. That wasn’t friendship, it was condescension. No matter how many more initials after their name or more zeroes in their paycheque than yours, you knew that they were nothing more than ants awaiting the malevolence of your great boot. That was your mask, Sam, not power, but the absence of it. Humility is your disguise; arrogance is your nature.”

The waiter returned with the finest wine on the menu, something Claudine had insisted, even at lunch. There were some things in which all lawyers are united. She took a sip, her face not twisting as mine did to the acidic, puissant taste of the drink. Her lips had known much stronger stuff than this, whereas my unpracticed mouth wouldn’t know a chardonnay from a champagne without the gift of eyesight. She placed down her glass, her mouth closed over the aromatic, liquid pleasure that came at fifty dollars a bottle and lifted her eyes again, this time with a steamy, intense scrutiny. “Indeed, Samuzzo, in your desperate act to hide your power, you ended up revealing it completely. Good thing I like powerful men.”