True Fine(ite) Love

12:43 PM Edit This 0 Comments »

There was nothing for it. She was going to have to tell him.

She’d spent all day searching, starting in the obvious places and finally resorting to unhooking the drain pipe and staring through the slats in the deck. But the ring was gone. Her engagement ring was gone. And not even St. Anthony seemed capable of bringing it back.

She didn’t know when the little band of gold and rock and promise had slipped off her finger. It was her housekeeper, Anita, who had alerted her to the fact that it was gone, asking her if she took it off when she typed.

It was as she said, “No, I always have it on.” that she realized her finger was bare. This struck her as more curious than tragic, until she looked up to see the horror in the elder woman’s face. A horror she belatedly tried to mimic, unconvincingly.

The ring, she had barely taken it off since the night he gave it to her. In the very beginning she didn’t wear it at night (it tended to get caught on the expensive sheets) but he looked so wounded whenever he saw her slip it off she’d stopped and it had become a permanent fixture until….

When had it fallen? Had she been wearing it that morning? The evening before? The day before that? She truly had no idea.

Trying to focus in on the last time she’d seen it, she found that, for all the months it had been a part of her, she couldn’t really picture it on her finger. Couldn’t quite remember what it would have looked like sitting there winking back at her.

Processing this, she could see Anita from the corner of her eye hovering by the office door and watching for a more suitable reaction. So she dropped to her knees behind her desk in a move she hoped both hid her from view and showed a genuine feminine upset at this turn of events.

While she was patting the pristine carpet, she thought of asking the housekeeper the last time she’d seen the ring. But she was unwilling to further scandalize the proper British woman was already staring down at her with all the judgment of Zeus.

She toyed with the idea of bursting into tears as a way of making amends but instead stayed tuck under her desk murmuring concerns scratching the pile until the door clicked shut.

She was upset about losing it, of course. It was a lovely ring and a large one.

But what truly shook her was how she hadn’t noticed it was gone. And how, her memory of it now, for all its size and weight, felt tenuous and hazy.

And she could not have been long without it she reasoned rolling onto her back. He’d been away two weeks; she must have had it on when he left. He would have noticed its absence. He had a tendency to stare at it, mesmerized, twisting it to see the sparkle.

“This is how much I love you” he’d tell her holding the hand up to better catch the light.

It wasn’t as crass as it sounded. Not really. It was just that he had no belief in the value of the infinite. He kept his emotions like he kept his investments, tied to solid assets.

And now he was hours away from coming home and she’d gone and lost his love somewhere, shed it like snakeskin and not even noticed. How could she tell him that? How could she ever explain it?

She began to panic. She had to find the ring. She jumped to her feet and scanned and floor. Then she turned to the desk, strewing papers and yanking on drawer handles with fervor enough to satisfy even Anita. She did not find it.

She ran to the bedroom checking first in the sheets, then fanning out across the room kicking shoes and digging through boxes she knew she had not touched in years. She did not find it. From room to room she went, shoving and lifting and praying and calling out for his love like a lost pup. She did not find it.

Hours later she sat, defeated, in a shirt smeared with drain sludge and a handful of deck slivers but without a ring. And she knew everything was over.

She didn’t love him. She never had. But the day he’d opened up the teal blue box to show her the sum total of his affection, she thought that maybe he loved enough for two.

But she’d lost his love and had nothing to replace it. And it was over.

And he was coming up the driveway. And she was going to have to tell him.

C'mon C'mon Let's Dance All Night

7:44 AM Edit This 0 Comments »

When you hear the heat humming in your ears like crickets…

When you feel the sun burning your shoulders and like it too much to move…

When you’re blinded by pavement glare and dazzled by diamond-laced pool waters…

When you can feel the ice-cold beer sliding down your throat all the way to your stomach…

When you create a party out of a bag of potatoes, a bottle of wine and a pack of smokes…

When you would rather be dirty and eaten alive than inside four walls…

It’s summer in the city

(Hot Time!)

To Be Honest With You

1:12 PM Edit This 2 Comments »

She missed him.

It’s strange she knew since she was not even sure exactly who she was missing. He’d only been around a few hours, drunken ones at that. But she missed him just the same.

His arrival had produced a moment perhaps, provided an inlet in the river of everyday happenings. A place to pause before life swept her along in its inevitable way back to morning espressos and work-a-days and TV movies and after dinner drinks.

It wasn’t that time stood still or any other vomitous notion like it. It was, perhaps, that she had. She stood still.

She took two hours to have a look around a place she hadn’t been in quite some time.

It was a strange place full of unknown quantities and harmless subterfuges, double-edged comments and loaded gestures. Not a bad place really, but one she had always found to be foreign and disorienting.

To be honest most of the time it scared the hell out her, this place of instant intimacies and heavy lidded stares. In previous visits she had always been acutely aware that she couldn’t speak the language. She did not know their reindeer games. And, being that she hated losing, she opted never to play.

But that night, well, she’d felt lucky. The cynical might say she was just lonely. But whether she felt unbeatable or simply that she had nothing to lose, the outcome was the same. From the minute she saw him watching her, the game was on.

So unlike her to gaze at someone, inching them forward with an arch of her eyebrow...

So unusual to laugh easily with someone unknown...

To sit so close so soon.

But she did all these things until the taxi came to bring her home giddy from gin and good company.

And the next day she dressed herself and drank strong coffee and told tall tales about her exploits keeping one ear cocked slightly towards the living room phone.

And the next day she went back to work looking occasionally for an email she was fairly certain would not arrive.

And the next day she called her mother, knowing there was no need to keep the line free, then she poured herself a glass of wine and flicked on the television.

And the next day she told a friend she was up for a drink on the way home from the office.

And the next day she missed him.

Sage Advice (Or "How I Won the War")

12:48 PM Edit This 1 Comment »

-- “And If I’ve really pissed her off, I have to get myself in a position where I can rub her back.”

--“'scuse me?”

--“Yeah, it’s the only thing that calms her down. It’s tricky too, especially when she’s yelling and her hands are flying everywhere… she’s a hand talker you know… worse than a friggin’ Frenchmen. But if I can just get in there and start running my hand down her back, you know scratch it a little? Then I can usually start talking my way out of whatever it is I’ve done.”

--“Hmmm Interesting. And she hasn’t caught on to this yet?”

--“Oh no, she’s totally on to it. She even tries to start fights when her back is to the wall so I can’t get my arm around. But once I’m in there it’s like Pavlovian or something. She just kinda melts. It’s awesome.”

--“Jesus. I’m going to have to try that next time I’m in the shit.”

--“Well, make sure you pick the right moment to go in dude. Time it wrong and you’ll end up with a shot in the face. It’s happened to me more than once.”

--“But that's, like, accidental right?”

--“Well… I choose to think so.”


(Speaking of How I Won The War, someone brought home a good li'l Report Card and made Mama proud.)

What is Up with the Pleather Banquettes?

8:36 AM Edit This 1 Comment »

This week I had dinner at one of my favourite restaurants. I hadn’t been in ages since I had been erroneously informed that it had closed. But it wasn’t (yay!). The windows had simply been boarded up while the place received a face lift.

This, like most face lifts has had the effect of making the place look sleek, shiny and discomfortingly like every other restaurant opened or renovated in the last three years.

It was once a cacophony of multicoloured mosaic tiles and mod-ish kitschy knick knacks with a stage suitable for the rock ‘n’ the roll and big ass TV which aired American football most of the time. (American football being a huge part of most pan-Asian décor don’t you know.)

It is now a tasteful (read bare) box full of dark wood and white pleather banquettes -- The bastard child of Spring Rolls and Salad King. A copy cat of every thai restaurant in the city.

The food (thank the lord almighty) is still the same…. Yumbo and fairly cheap.

But the feel of the place is now more doctor’s waiting room that exotic food emporium.

I am all for making things better, but does better really have to mean equal parts bland and bamboo?

Just Stick the Knife in My Heart and be Done With it Stephen

8:48 AM Edit This 0 Comments »

So our fearless leader has decided that he needs to add some of this managerial magic to the press room. According to an article from the Globe and Mail:

“The prime minister does not want to hold press conferences unless his staff choose which journalists ask questions from a list they compile. "

The Ottawa press gallery has refused to play by those rules. So the gallery isn’t asking questions and the prime minister is dealing only with local media outlets which he deems less hostile.

But don’t let this decision fool you into thinking that this decision will effect the provision of hard hitting news stories about the government. Just today this crucial piece of news made headlines on Sympatico.msn.ca:

Tories reject recommendation to impose surtaxes on bike and barbecue imports

"On behalf of all retailers across Canada who sell bicycles and barbecues this is a huge victory for their customers and their businesses," Diane Brisebois, president and CEO of the industry association, said in a release.”

Now THAT’S what I call news… at least these days.

Sigh….