Famous Last Meals Read Online Free Page A

of what’s left as they can afford to their loved ones, and try their darnedest to get them over here to live. We’ve never known that desperation. We’ll probably never know their urgency. We grew up stupid, Adam, stupid and complacent and happy.”
    He studied her face for a moment. Clearly he had misjudged her. She was more complicated and worldly than he had first thought.
    Monday after work they attended a reception for the incoming Principal Secretary in a room off Confederation Hall in the Centre Block. It was a chance for everyone to meet Lorne and for the summer students to have a taste of the grander side of Wellington Street. Adam stood talking to Pookie, Eugène and Isaac, who wiped his brow with the cuff of his shirt every few minutes and repeated that the PM himself was supposed to make an appearance. “What do I say if he asks me a question?”
    â€œTry your best, Isaac,” said Pookie.
    â€œBut I don’t know anything.”
    â€œIt doesn’t stop most MP s,” she said.
    Lorne spotted Pookie from across the room, came over and draped an arm around her shoulders, giving the far one a fatherly squeeze. She leaned into it, resting her head briefly against his chest. She was smiling in that hilarious way of hers, which to the uninitiated made her look as if she were on the verge of tears.
    Lorne was in a dark, pinstriped three-piece suit. He had a natty sense of style, a step up the fashion ladder from academic tweed and intellectual distraction, but not quite displaying the PM ’s flair. Lorne Childs looked as if he would be as comfortable in a Bay Street boardroom as on the dais of an Ivy League lecture theatre.
    He said hello and asked after Adam’s father. “How do you like the work so far?”
    â€œI’m enjoying it. I’m not sure about what we’re doing, though.”
    â€œWhat we’re doing.”
    â€œThe PMO using its resources to put the person it wants into Parliament.”
    â€œThis is a partisan office, Adam. We’re not Canada Revenue.”
    â€œI know. It still doesn’t seem right to me. I think Don Feeney should have to go the route every other candidate does.”
    â€œThe PMO helps in the campaigns of many candidates in the party. I assumed you knew that.” He looked as if Adam had suggested that the entire democratic system had collapsed. He began panning the room, looking for someone else to talk to.
    Adam looked at the empty Champagne flute in his hand and couldn’t remember draining it.
    The PM , taller than Adam expected he would be, was making his way closer. Adam felt Lorne beside him stretching in anticipation. He thought about sweaty Isaac and his anxiety over not knowing what to say to the leader. Adam had already said something and it had been more than enough. Lorne probably had him pegged for an imbecile. His future on the Hill was now officially null. He imagined that Lorne had communicated Adam’s pronouncement, either telepathically or via a sophisticated electronic device, to the PM . He was convinced that the PM was going to ask him the same question. “So, Adam Lerner, you don’t think it’s a good idea for the PMO to be a politically partisan body. You would prefer something like the Governor General’s retinue, I take it, a household of servants in powdered wigs and velvet breeches, people whose ancestors stretching back many generations did precisely what their descendants are doing today. You would replace a cornerstone of our parliamentary system with something static and elitist. Am I reading you correctly on this? Can we even assume that you would allow the Prime Minister to remain a member of a political party or would you abolish that privilege as well?”
    The great man was getting closer. To leave the reception now, before the leader did, would be the worst kind of insult, and yet that was exactly what Adam felt he had to do before he expired on