He walked the twelve blocks home despite the fact that he was more than a little unsteady on his feet by that point. Half way through a shortcut down some nameless laneway off Spadina, he collapsed in a heap on a discarded packing crate for a time out. As he forced himself back to his feet a minute later, dazed and confused, a stubble-faced ruffian, beer gut lolling, limped out of a dark-side alley to confront him.
“Hey there, chief, got a smoke?” he called.
“No I don’t, and I’m not your chief either,” Stephan yelled, suddenly in a frenzy. “Or your buddy, or your bro, you stupid ugly bastard.”
“Whatdyousay?” said the man, looking around wildly, as if he expected Stephan’s posse to leap out of the bushes.
“I said smoking causes cancer, in case you hadn’t heard, you crazy dumbass.”
He was sprinting down another laneway, fighting off nausea, his muscles burning, even as he found that for some reason he was cackling maniacally. He seemed to have eluded his pursuer, finally, not that the guy had put more than a token effort into the chase. Thank God for smoker’s lung, Stephan said to himself as he slowed to a walk, although he probably had deserved the beating the man had offered him.
The chase had taken its toll on him too, he suddenly realized. He leaned against a lamp post and vomited once, twice, a third time, spattering his shoes and pant legs. Noticing another Telegraph newspaper box across the street, he pictured it reporting his humiliation back to its injured colleague. The two of them would then share a laugh at his expense, the bastards.
The next day he woke late to the strains of Gamblor’s plaintive mewing, which seemed to rise and fall in unison with the pounding in his skull. Opening his eyes, he found the cat sitting on the bed a foot away from his face. Were her meows expressions of concern for his well-being or signals of a more basic desire for a snack? He wanted to believe the former but suspected the latter.
For several minutes there was a void in the place in his brain where last night’s events should have been filed, though already he understood that things had not gone well. Soon, however, the memories began to come back to him, at first as disjointed fragments, most of them unfortunate. Gradually they resolved themselves into a story of sorts. A highly regrettable story.
A light on his phone was beaming forth a distant beacon from the outside world. The call and ensuing message must have come in while he was sleeping. His first thought was that maybe it was her, calling to offer some apology or explanation for her behaviour. But when he checked his voicemail the only message waiting for him was from Pete, who’d called to tell him that his and Sally’s offer on the house had been accepted. They’d be closing in a few weeks and, oh yes, would Stephan be able to pitch in on moving day?
“How sad for you, my friend,” Stephan said, out loud, as if Pete were actually there on the line. “Throwing your youth away to settle down with a kind, mature woman who loves and supports you? Truly unfortunate.”
He hung up the phone and flopped back down on the bed, where he lay for a long time, miserable and inert. There really was no way to put a positive spin on what had taken place the night before. Jenny Wynne had tossed him aside, and done so in the most cruel and careless way imaginable. It was a worst-case scenario. After he’d laid there for a good half-hour, paralysed with angst, Gamblor came over to check for vital signs. She sat herself down in front of him and mewed questioningly a couple of times. When he made no response, she gave him a whack with her paw, as if testing his reflexes.
“Don’t worry, old friend,” he croaked. “Still alive.”
She meowed again, in an especially mournful tone this time. He reached out to pet her, to offer what reassurance he could in his current state, but at the last moment she slipped through his fingers, then sauntered off towards the kitchen, not even bothering to grace him with a backward glance.
* * * * *
He tried to convince himself that he didn’t care, that he’d known all along it was just a fling, but this pretence was too obviously false to sustain. On the second morning after the debacle, his phone had rung, and he’d snatched it up in a single fluid motion, as if he were swatting a mosquito as it landed on his neck. He thought he heard somebody let out a regretful sigh on the other end of the connection, but it must have been his imagination, because after a couple of seconds an automated recording kicked in.
“Hallo, this is Janos speaking,” said a cartoonish male voice, in a bad parody (he assumed) of a thick Eastern European accent. “Are you in needing of movers service? We is cheap and hardworker fellows of strong muscle...”
He hung up, uncertain if it was a legitimate sales pitch or someone’s bizarre idea of a joke.
Several times he picked up the phone, cradling it in his hand as if about to make a call. But there wasn’t anyone he needed to speak to just now, and so each time, after a moment of confusion, he put it back down and wandered off to do something else. Meanwhile, the phone just sat there, inert. Even Janos had given up on him.
On the fourth morning, he braved the sweltering mid-summer head and rode his bike down to the lab. The streets he took on the way were mostly abandoned, people out of town for their summer vacations or sequestered in air-conditioned rooms, praying for rain.
He didn’t have much developing work to do that day. Business had been flat in recent weeks, and the handful of things he did have on his plate weren’t enough to keep him busy. But he figured a little time in the darkroom might replenish his mojo. The darkroom had always been a safe harbour, a place where the petty annoyances of life melted away. It had also occurred to him that Bill might be around. Bill wasn’t someone Stephan would want to actually burden with his problems, but the man’s calm and groundedness had an infectious quality to it. Even a brief chat about the hot weather might prove therapeutic, Stephan figured.
But alas Bill was not to be found at the lab that day, and so Stephan wearily retired to darkroom three for a stab at productivity. It did not go well. Within fifteen minutes of his arrival he had already ruined an entire roll of negatives, after failing to watch the clock and taking them out of the developer tub way too early. Then he somehow got his stop bath mixed up with his fixer, which led to several botched prints. Giving up in frustration, he tossed everything he’d been working on into the trash, then dragged himself back home. Along the way, for good measure, he nearly got himself run over by a street-sweeper as he dodged his bike out around a parked car on Ossington Street, but the driver swerved at the last moment and failed to put him out of his misery.
She called him up a week after the painful evening at the Balfour. He hadn’t been expecting the call, then or ever. Nevertheless, he had spent several days by that point thinking through exactly what he wanted to say, going so far as to write down a number of key phrases and important ideas he wanted to be sure to get across to her.
Despite this extensive preparation, his mind went blank as soon as he heard her voice.
“Stephan Stern, how’s it going?” she was saying, all blasé and cheerful as if nothing at all had changed.
“Jenny? I... well, I guess you could say I’ve been better.” Already the conversation was a flopping salmon about to slip through his fingers. “We need to talk,” he said, wincing at the cliché even as he uttered it, but managing to keep his voice firm.
“Sounds serious.”
His shoulders sagged. “Now you’re making fun of me,” he said.
“Oh wow, I’m sorry, Steph.” Her voice finally modulated, taking on a just a hint of concern, as if she were finally cluing in to the fact that he wasn’t interested in engaging with her in witty banter just now. “I was just trying to be friendly, honestly.”
He wanted to confront her, to bring things into the open and figure out what was really going on – passive aggression, insanity, mere cruel indifference? All of the above?
“We need to talk,” he said.
“Isn’t that what we’re doing?”
“In person.”
&
nbsp; “Hey, that’s perfect. I was just calling to see if you wanted to get together for lunch tomorrow.”
“Huh.”
After hanging up the phone, he stayed seated on his couch, lost in thought. He was still angry, both with her, and, much more, with himself. But even as the wave of disgust washed over him, it was met by a countervailing wave of excitement, anticipation. He would be seeing her tomorrow. He rose from the couch and set about gathering up the dirty laundry that lay scattered around the room. He needed to get down to the laundromat – he was out of clean underwear.
The next day, wearing freshly washed clothes for the first time since the Balfour, he took the Bloor subway west to High Park for their meet-up. It was a clear, temperate day. A strong wind had blown up on the previous evening, dispersing the yellowy smog that had hung over the city in recent weeks, and the air was fresh for a change. If summer had a summer, this was it. Even so, there was already an inkling of fall in the air, although September was still weeks away.
She was already at the café when he arrived, which, given her customary tardiness, was notable. He was a few minutes late himself, as it happened, but only because he’d learned over the course of many meetings to set his watch on Jenny time. The patio was nearly full, even though it was the middle of the afternoon, half-way between the lunch and dinner hours. But despite the crowds, she’d managed to secure a central table with a sweeping view of the patio and street. The table was neatly canopied by the branches of a tree with small exotic leaves, gold-hued. Glancing up at it, he felt a fleeting desire to know what kind of tree it was, even as he sensed he never would. Why would he ever have the occasion to learn such a thing?
There was a Mac laptop open in front of her, one of the new generation of svelte, purse-sized ones that were trendy at the time. He stood on the sidewalk unseen, watching as she tapped away at the keys, a faint smirk playing about her mouth (no doubt she had just come up with some sparkling bon mot for her next column). Pausing, she took a sip from a mug – of cappuccino, frappuccino, café au lait, fair-trade whathaveyou. As she drank, her eyes peeked out above the white porcelain, scanning the faces around her. She saw him and lifted a hand in greeting.
“Stephan! Hi!” Her voice was bright and bell-like in the clear air.
“Hi,” he said in a curt tone, as she caught him up in a brief, tight hug. He felt the graze of her fingernails on his back through the fabric of his shirt.
“You’re looking so well!” As she said this, she gazed up into his eyes as if she were in love with him, and had been all along. “And you smell amazing. What kind of soap is that?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Ivory, I guess.”
“Ivory? How deliciously spartan. I love it.”
“Uh... thanks.”
She was more beautiful than ever that day. The cotton summer dress she’d worn was brown and informal, the fabric stippled with tiny blue and yellow flowers. Earthy, vaguely hippieish, it wasn’t in keeping with her usual look, but it worked. It also matched her skin, which had taken on a honey-brown tone, and her hair, which was now sun-streaked with bright yellow highlights. The hours she’d been logging on patios like this one had achieved the precise effect that many women spent hundreds of dollars in salons trying to replicate. Her eyes were the same cool blue they always were.
“So, you wanted to talk,” she said, after he’d settled in and ordered a drink.
He took a sip of his sparkling water – not a particularly commanding choice of beverage, it occurred to him, too late. Placing his glass down on its paper coaster, he carefully centred the base on the dark circle of condensation that had already formed there.
“Yes,” he said.
“How intriguing. Are you planning some sort of swindle?”
“Ha ha. Not at the moment – sorry.”
“I’ve always thought that would be a cool thing to do if the journalism gig were to fall through – pulling off some audacious heist, I mean. Of course, whatever we stole, it would have to be something really worthwhile, like a rare painting, or a famous sapphire.”
“Interesting event the other night at the Balfour,” he said.
“Yeah, crazy.”
“I missed you later on in the evening. I guess you and your friend Angela had somewhere else you needed to be.”
“She’s great, isn’t she?”
“You seemed to think so – great enough to ditch my ass for, at least.”
“Aw, Steph, I’m sorry. We looked for you before we headed out. But you’d wandered off.”
“Actually, I was mostly just standing at the bar, and then looking around for you. I mean, you were the one who’d invited me out.”
“You’re right, Steph – I am sorry. That wasn’t nice. Unintentionally of course, but still. I guess I got a little distracted after setting you up with those contacts from Grampus. I should have been more attentive.”
He nodded in acknowledgement of the apology, if that was what it in fact was.
“Was that what you wanted to speak with me about?” she asked, as if the subject were now closed.
“Yes… or no,” he stammered. “I mean, there was more to discuss.” An eloquent and nuanced description of his feelings on the matter formed briefly in his mind and instantly disintegrated, the individual words scattering in the light gust of wind that had just come up. The wind ruffled the folds of her brown dress, snapping them around like sails.
“Listen, Jen. About you and Angela...” She’d left him no choice but to come out and say it. “I mean, is there something going on there?”
She stared back at him, her eyes lidded, then let out a quiet chuckle. “You just called me Jen for the first time, like, ever,” she said. “I’m guessing that’s means I’m in trouble.”
“As if that’s any surprise to you.”
She shrugged. “Honestly, it is, a little.”
“I’m serious about this, Jen,” he said, pressing. He was determined to get an answer out of her.
“Stephan, please. There’s nothing going on between Angela Song and me, I promise.”
“Nothing? I saw you kissing her after the event, in a taxi. And groping too – I distinctly saw groping.”
“You did, did you? Well, you’ve always had an active visual imagination, Stephan. And if I remember correctly you were putting away the drinks rather enthusiastically that evening – maybe you weren’t seeing straight.”
He took a sip of water, placed his glass back down on its coaster, and looked her hard in the eye.
“So... did you sleep with her?” he asked, in a low, steady voice.
She threw her head back and laughed with what sounded like genuine amusement. “No we did not – although I bet you would have liked that. Pervert.”
“You didn’t fool around?”
“No, Stephan – not that it’s any of your business, anyway. Last time I checked you and I hadn’t actually been joined in holy matrimony.”
He was certain that she was lying, deflecting him from the truth about her hook-up by going on the offensive. She could sell a story with the best of them (it was her profession, after all) but he had seen a subtle curl around the corners of her mouth.
“And I’m fond of you too, Stephan, I am,” she was saying. “But to be honest, I’m a bit surprised. Your meeting me here to ask me about someone I was hanging out with. I mean, why bother?”
She behaved as if she was puzzled in a genuine and good-natured way.
“I just... I like you,” he admitted with a sigh. “I’m sorry if that’s embarrassing. For both of us.”
She smiled, not unkindly. “Not embarrassing, just a little old fashioned,” she said. “I mean, we’re these young people, with so much going on in our lives and our careers, so much in front of us. There’s no way I’m ready to settle down at this point. Live in the suburbs with the kids and the dog and the clichéd picket fence. Not now, and probably not ever.”
“Well, and I’m not either...”
“That
’s exactly my point! Of course you aren’t,” she said. “This place, our milieu, has so much to offer us right now. There are so many opportunities, so many possibilities. Why would we want to be in a rush to put it all behind us?”
“But Jenny, I never said that we should move out to the suburbs, you know, or that it was time to call in a priest to witness our vows. I just thought we were turning into, you know, a real couple.”
“Why the need for labels, though, Stephan? Why the need for a stamp of ownership? I care for you too, you know that. I don’t want to lose what we have. But I think you need to step back a bit on this one, see the bigger picture.”
Anger welled up inside him. “Maybe I just find your way of looking at things depressing – like it’s all some meaningless game.”
“But this isn’t all there is if we don’t want it to be. There will be time for the other things, if and when we decide we really want them. All in due course.”
“All in due course,” he repeated.
“Because, really, Stephan, what’s the alternative? Some sort of neo-1950s thing? Married at 21, father knows best, wife in the kitchen baking cookies while dreaming up lascivious narratives about the pool guy?”
“Jenny, it’s not that black and white.”
“Of course it’s not, but what I’m trying to say is that you’re looking at things through this weird, sentimental lens. If you really want the kind of life you’re saying you want, you’re looking for it in the wrong place, aren’t you? Surely you’re not that naïve?”
The Silver Age Page 8
