Kerry Says

Meet Kate:

This day, from now on to be known as the day he left, was no different from any other. This bothered her. She was breaking up with the man she had loved, or whatever, for four yeas. Wasn’t it time for crying jags, masochistic drinking binges and emotional self-abuse?

Was she really going to survive this major life change with only a mild headache and irritation over scratches his movers had left on the hardwood.

The phone rings and Allison’s number pops up on the phone. It sounds like salvation. This means sitting at home is soon to become a break-up booze up with her bestie. This means self-indulgent actions with no consequence. This means free drinks. This is what normal people did when they ended four-year relationships.

“You’d better be calling with a plan and a pocket full of money,” she says in lieu of hello.

“What? Hunni how are you? Are you drunk?”

“No I’m not drunk. I’m not sorry that he left, and I’m not glad he’s gone. But let’s focus on the not drunk bit. It seems the part most likely to change with the least effort in the shortest period of time. Oh, how are you?”

“Fine. On my way over I guess, but the traffic’s nasty. Can you just meet me The Local instead? Then we can get right ripped and promote some prosperity for local enterprise.”

“It’s great the way you make me feel smart by using all that lawyer talkin’,” Kate says sweetly, cradling the receiver as she grabs her bag off the table and jams keys and sunglasses inside. It is nearly evening, but Kate feels new relationship widows should have their shades on hand to mask any tears... or in her case lack thereof.

Ali snorts into the phone. “Yeah well, if I associated with dumb people it could harm my stellar reputation.”

“Funny. I’m heading out and the drink will be running when you get there.... along with a tab in your name. See you soon.”

Meet Stewart:

Stewart sits at the bar. His jacket pulled tightly against his body, lips pulled tightly against his teeth. He is cold despite the fire and a pitcher of draft. This place is his second home, but it doesn’t feel it tonight. He wonders if that had anything to do with the fact that he is now homeless.

A heavy arm lands on his shoulder and a slurred voice offers to “by you a drink.” His funds are low, but he isn’t in the mood to barter friendship for beer. With a shrug he removes the offending limb. His would-be sugar-daddy grunts and spins around to look at the “piece of shit who thinks he’s too good to let me buy him a beer.”

Stewart puts his head down, slides off his stool and out the door hoping to avoid a fight. Or as he tends to think of them, beatings.

He can’t fight at the best of times, and certainly not tonight. He can barely keep his knees from giving out, and not because of the fear of an impending ass kicking, well not only that. The twinges he’d felt in the pit of his stomach when he’d packed the last of his things this morning had not been the shock of his eviction from the love nest, but the initial warnings of a full blown case of the flu. A flu presumably passed on by the heartless bitch who evicted him, though she didn’t seem to be suffering any symptoms. Typical.

Out on the street, he briefly debates exorcising the virus and a demon or two by picking up a hooker. A constant urge to vomit curbs the desire, well not only that. Truth be told, he’s never actually attempted to pick up a hooker before. Not because he is in any way against it, but because of a fear that he may be rejected.

Stewart feels the December air creeping up the sleeves of his jacket and tries to pick up the pace, but the effort leads to an intense coughing spasm knocks which leads to him falling flat on his ass.

From this vantage point, he comes to realize a few things. The first; that he is kind of drunk. The second; that he gave his heart to a woman, and when he headed out the door of their (now her) apartment this morning she had failed to return it. The third; He is in fact quite drunk and won’t be getting up off the ground any time soon.

A winter’s night is not a good time to take up temporary residence on the street, thinks Stewart. There is something about lifting your head off the pavement to coming face-to-face with the homeless guy you always mean to buy a coffee for and never do that doesn’t allow you to feel sorry for yourself but instead forces you to remember that sometimes you can be a real asshole.

“I’m going to end up just like him,’ thinks Stewart, all cold and lonely and resentful of the sad looks happy people are shooting him on their way to more important things.

“I ‘m going to die here tonight,” he mumbles to the twinkling stars. “I really think I am going to die.”

“The only way you’re going to die tonight is if I kick your ass for leaving me waiting at the bar for the last hour,” replies a voice from somewhere overhead.

Then a woman’s face appears above him. In his increasingly feverish state, he thinks for a moment that she might be an angel. His guardian angel, come to take him home. Wherever that was now.

The woman sticks an icy hand under his head, propping him up roughly against a building and then Stewart knows who she is. He knows that she is not an angel and he knows that she is furious.

He tries to tell her he’s sorry he’d forgotten to meet her. He tries to tell her he has a cold. He wants to ask her how her day was and if she could help him up because the sidewalk is damp.

What he says is, “the bitch kept the ring AND my Boston albums!”

Then Stewart starts to cry.

“Aw Jesus. She chucked you,” she says grabbing his arm and watches in horror as he blows his nose on her scarf.

“Oh fuck, you’re a mess. I guess we should get you home”

As the word leaves her mouth Stewart’s eyes well up again. She sighs, hails a cab and says, “OK not home then. I’ll take you to The Local.”

There are reasons why it’s better to go down kicking and screaming than to be simply swept away. But at that hour of morning she was hard pressed to remember any of them. At that time of day it seemed inconceivable Sophie could muster up the effort necessary to defend herself from this verbal onslaught.

No. It was much easier just to sit there glassy-eyed and take it.

And in this manner she was fired, again. Ending her stint at the fourth accountancy firm she’d been dismissed from this year.

The first time she’d been tearful, the second put out. By round three a sense of déjà vu left her feeling only mild amusement. And by number four her general attitude would be best described as resigned.

In all cases she’d have been happy to scream “I quit”, but had remained silent until her total lack of enthusiasm and work ethic said it for her.

With her newly old boss still leaning over his desk, accusatory finger still pointed, saliva still glistening at the corners of his mouth, she stood, exited the room, grabbed her purse and Fichus plant of the desk and saw herself out.

It was just after nine o’clock in the morning and she was unemployed again. The feeling was like that of an old pair of shoes. Perhaps a little uncomfortable now but so familiar you don’t mind it.

That she had been sacked didn’t bother her. She didn’t care much for accounting or accountants. In fact she was pretty sure she was done with the field altogether.

That she was broke didn’t bother her either. In fact, to her mind she wasn’t broke…. yet. She had some outstanding salary to collect and some vacation pay. She was going to be broke, no doubt, and soon.

But not today.

Today she could still take herself over to the fancy coffee shop, where they sprinkled cinnamon on absolutely everything, to buy a little treat to cheer herself up. She was rather fond of cinnamon.

It wasn’t until after she was sitting at a window table with her plant at her feet and her hands around an enormous steaming cup that she realized the one thing that did bother her about the whole situation.

She had an “I told you so” coming to her. It was likely to be more than one, she had become quite the spectacular failure in the working department, but there was one to come from a most unpleasant source. A screeching, gloating, judgmental source.

Sophie took a long slow sip and wondered how long she could go without Heather finding out about it. Not long she decided.

Her sister would know the minute they saw each other. There were no secrets from Heather, (Hawk-Eye their father had dubbed her). The girl had an uncanny knack of sizing you up in a heartbeat, then broadcasting your innermost secrets in stereo. Sophie remembered:

Walking out of the bathroom one day shortly after her 12^th birthday; “OH MY GOD! You’ve got your PERIOD!”

At 16 running up the stairs brown bag in hand; “OH MY GOD! You’re on the PILL!”

At 23 sitting down to dinner dry-eyed and tight lipped: “OH MY GOD! He DUMPED YOU!”

Thinking on it, she couldn’t recall any event in her life that hadn’t been conveyed to her family in this way. Older and wiser, Heather had been the narrator of Sophie’s life for over a quarter century.

Not that Sophie wouldn’t have like to get a word in edgewise every once in a while to set some things straight. (It is truly amazing the way your family can know every single thing about and understand absolutely nothing.) But trying to stop Heather was like trying to slow a freight train down by blowing on it.

No, Sophie had learned. It was so much easier to just sit there glassy-eyed and take it. Being Heather’s little sister was the only job she'd never managed to lose, and as much as it pained her to admit it, she wouldn't quit this one either.

Draining the last of her cuppa even as her bladder protested, she fished her cell phone out of her bag and dialed a number.

“’lo?”

“Hi Hez, it’s me”

“OH MY GOD! They SACKED you!”

STOP SHOOTING PEOPLE!!!!

Go do some drugs or drink alone or listen to Morrisey like eveyone else before you did.

Jesus...

http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2006
/09/13/shots-dawson.html

Jefferson stirred his coffee as the voice of a long-dead entertainer told complained that “it’s lonely out in space”.

No lonelier than anywhere else he thought staring out the observation panel into the darkness.

He would know, having spent the greater part of a decade moored in this station to the edge of a planet not unlike his own, but quite unwelcoming to the notion of permanent residents. The years of wealthy tourists lining up for a taste of “Life on Mars” were long since over It was now difficult to tempt even scientific minds to come and try a hand at turning the inhospitable red orb into a home.

No, after 40 years of circling its hostile borders, losing time, and lives and hope and, most importantly, money, the human race had decided to turn attention to saving the old tattered planet instead.

But still Jefferson came, begging funding from the few moneyed pessimists and doomsday prophets hedging their bets for survival. He had managed to keep his unrequited courtship with Mars hobbling along, though he was now a team of one, often left for months at a time in the crumbling station.

He’d wait until his very last crate of TANG (traditions must be respected) had been opened before requesting one of the sleek silver rockets now used primarily as pleasure cruisers providing tours of the outer orbit come to bring him back so he could restock supplies and recharge power sources.

He never stayed long.

Why?

Because, coward that he was, Jefferson found Mars was a less terrifying alternative to suicide and he felt he had no reason to stay on this Earth any longer.

Why?

A woman of course.

THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS, STAY TUNED

I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.

Stop it. You have to stop it.

Have some mercy.

I think I’m going to pass out, please.

You can’t keep it going like this, I can’t take it.

I think I just…. Yes I’ve lost bladder control.

Oh my god, it’s still coming.

Let me up… let me up off this couch I need to get out of here.

Can you at least press pause and let me catch my breath?

I hope you’ve had this thing Scotch-guarded.

An excerpt from a conversation you yourself may have as you watch the copy of Little Miss Sunshine that has just come in on DVD to the local video store.

Can't wait? Then see it in the theatre... and wear some Depends.

“I am planning to put some pictures up. I know how it looks,” Patrick said as he ushered his guest through the spacious and sparsely decorated living room and into the kitchen.

“Of course,” She replied, just as she’d replied during every visit she’d made since he’d taken ownership of the loft.

“I mean, I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “Six months and it still looks like a warehouse or something.

“No, No,” She soothed, I think it’s nice. It’s… roomy.”

“I know you all think I’m not committing to this whole change your environment change your life plan blah, blah, blah. But I totally am. Not that the whole commitment thing has worked out for me so far, ha ha.” He said pouring her a cup of coffee from the impressive looking espresso machine on the counter. The elaborate chrome and eagle-topped contraption had been a wedding present, and the only thing he’d taken from his last kitchen.

And, as far as she could tell, it was the only thing he had added to the new one.

It was like that all over the house. Bare rooms spotted with odd and impractical remembrances of his married life. A gilded music holidng wet towels in the bathroom, a large oak humidor used as a TV stand in the bedroom. And a wrought iron garden bench tossed with mismatched linen pillows in the living room where he was now directing her to take a seat as there was no other chair in the place.

“So, speaking of horrible failures, have you talked to her lately?” He said far too brightly to convince her that he wasn’t desperate for news.

“Pat honey, I thought we agreed to skip this whole nightmare topic for a while,” she said wearily. She’d tried to say it humorously, forcefully and even pleadingly in past visits but with very little success.

“Yeah. Sure, whatever. That’s totally fine. I don’t even really care; I was just asking to be polite…. And, you know, because she was only the freakin’ love of my life and one true soul mate,” he added with a lopsided grin that would have broken her heart if she hadn’t begun to steel herself against it months ago. So she simply changed the subject.

“How’s work?”

“Oh work’s work. I show up, slap on my natty headset, tell a few people that maybe they shouldn't off themselves, punch my time card and come home.” He replied, absently stretching his long legs out to meet the upturned wine rack-cum-coffee table. Cherry would she guessed, expensive, and notably empty.

“Well, that just sounds like hell.”

She often worried about his decision to work at a suicide hotline, more so now that Brit had left him. But even when he was having a relationship with the lady herself and not her absence, he’d never really been one to look on the bright side.

“Oh don’t worry. If I was going to kill myself I’d do it because she’s left me to wallow alone in my own mad and obsessive love for her. Not because some fat fucker in Etobicoke can’t get laid and hates his gay father.”

“Comforting, that’s really comforting Pat. So that’s work taken care of. What’s the next topic of conversation you’d like to bring to a screeching halt?” She asked wriggling forward to dislodge a metal rose from between her forth and fifth vertebrae.

“Health? Let’s see. I went to the doctor for my physical on Tuesday. So far no doomsday calls, and for the first time in six months I had someone caress my balls without paying for the privilege. Thank you OHIP!”

“Oh Christ. Well, that covers your sex life too.”

“Yessiree. We are just whipping through this visit buddy.”

“Well it does help that you haven’t bothered to make any inquiries into my health or well being.”

“Oh. Sorry. I have been wondering…. Pregnant or just bloated?”

“Hilarious.”

“Seriously, how are things in Utero?”

“So far, so good. Have the first ultra sound scheduled for next week.”

“Can you get photos of that?”

“Uh-huh”

“Can I ask you a personal question?”

“Wow, two in a row? I’m flabbergasted, let her rip.”

“It’s not mine is it?”

“Well seeing as we’ve never had sex, I’m thinking it’s not.”

“I guess. Though you do use my toilet. A lot. Every time you are here. And maybe sometimes in my excitement I’ve missed the mark a little?”

“O.K. So now I am picturing you masturbating into the toilet and I am a little nauseous. What I am not, however, is carrying your baby, which you would know if you had paid any attention to the public health nurse in Seventh grade.”

“Pity. If it was mine you could send me the ultra sound and I’d have something to hang on my wall. Maybe I’ll be the godfather?”

“No chance jack off Johnny.”

“Nice talk from the pregnant woman gulping down a double espresso. I wouldn’t want to be any kind of father to your junkie baby anyway.”

“Maybe it’s better when we do only talk about you.”

“I miss her Sarah.”

“I know you do honey.”

You're Internet goes down.

And you can't access things for a week or so.

And that starts to feel like years.

And then you can't even imagine how it was that you were able to write the things you did.

How did you do that?

Why does it seem so impossible now?

It’s too damn hot to be this angry, but he’d gotten himself good and outraged and even the blanket of wet smog over the city could not smother it.

Something has his Irish up. Even from the other side of the party she can see his index finger jabbing accusingly into the arm of young David standing to his left.

“How can anyone get that worked up at a toddler’s birthday party?” Lila asks her daughter gesturing towards her Henry and trying to determine if she likes her nephew enough to walk over and save him from the one-fingered assault.

“David told him if they’d wanted a professional clown for the party today they should have seen if the Prime Minister was free,” Anna responds by way of explanation.

“Oh well, the hell with him then,” Lila says dismissing the young man’s pleading gazes. “He’s brought this on himself.”

“Except that if dad keeps this up he’s going to have a heart attack, scarring your grandson and all his little friends for life,” Anna says pushing her mother gently towards the eye of the storm.

Lila tries to resist but can’t help noticing the florid colouring of her husbands face; A mixture of too much sun, too many vodka tonics and entirely too much investment in the defense our nation’s leader.

So she sighs, squares her shoulder’s and crosses the lawn.

“Watching you making this much of a public spectacle, I’d at least hope it would be in the defense of MY honour,” she says stepping between the two men and gently running a hand across her Henry’s forehead wiping away the beads of sweat.

“Oh these kids, Lila,” Her Henry practically spits at her. “They think they know everything. They’ve never had to work for anything in there lives. Never had to fight for anything. Everything always just handed to them and then they bite the hands that feed them!”

She grabs his hand just before he’s about to land a jab. “Don’t even think about it. And quit yelling at me, I’m not one of the kids. Actually quit yelling full stop. This is your grandson’s birthday party and you had better just simmer down and little and enjoy it.”

“I’m not yelling. I’m just trying to set this boy straight.” Her Henry says, attempting to temper his anger but succeeding only in making his words come out strangled and monotone.

“Honest to god Henry….,” she mumbles then turns towards David saying “it’s a miracle I haven’t murdered this one yet.”

But as she looks at her nephew, with his confident stance and indulgent smile, her irritation turns into another feeling entirely.

And as she hears him say, to her Henry, “You sure can get fired up about things there Unc. Best watch your blood pressure. Ha! Ha!” and the placating tone penetrates into her brain, the feeling hardens.

And as she sees that whatever affection this boy has for her Henry is laced with pity; pity for an old man with an old body and older notions. She realizes if there was one man she’d gladly kill at the moment, it was not her Henry.

And she proceeds to tell him so, ensuring the point is hammered home with the tip of a well manicured mail.

She had become so fixated the knot in the centre of the interrogation room’s scarred oak table that her whole body leaned into it like a tree in a wind storm.

So intent was her focus it seemed all consuming, causing the detectives to jump inside their sweat-soaked blazers as she snapped her head up to say, “You couldn’t kill anyone wearing flip flops.”

“Excuse me?” said the shorter of her two interrogators.

The good cop she assumed. An assumption based solely on the fact that he was the larger of the two men (his partner being a freakishly tall man who could not have weighed much more than she did). Blame Santa but she couldn’t help but equate fat with jolly.

Though to be honest neither of them had been overly friendly towards her, not at all like on T.V. The heat in the station was making everybody cranky and on edge.

She turned her eyes towards them, trying to ignore the magnetic pull of the table knot, then silently stood up and began a slow march around the table. The detectives watched her in a silence broken only by the hum of the overhead fan and the sound her leather sandals made as the slapped against the heels of her feet.

Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. To a sum total of 32 thwacks before she was back at her chair, looking up at them expectantly. She was rewarded with more silence and a raised eyebrow from Detective Tall.

She was a bit surprised. These men were supposed to be cracker-jack crime fighters, but it appeared further explanation was in order.

“He was shot from behind, you said. At close range, you said. Well you can’t just sneak up on someone if you are wearing flip flops. They are WAY too loud.”

A full minute went by as the detectives looked at her, then at each other, then at whoever was behind the one-way mirror filling the back wall of the room.

“I’m sorry Mrs. Marshall. But I think we’re having a misunderstanding here. We brought you up from the holding cell because you told us you had an alibi,” said Detective Tall.

“Yes,” she agreed.

“Ma'am, it’s late and I’m tired, and frankly, I’m sweating like a pig. So maybe we you can just go on ahead and give it to us,” said Santa Cop in a tone that made her think perhaps he wasn’t the good cop after all.

“I just did.”

“Ma’am?”

“My flip flops. I’ve been wearing them all day. Even at supper time when Ethan was shot. He was shot around supper time, you said.”

Santa sat down at the table and ran his hands through his hair, then down along his pant legs to dry them off. She tried desperately not to look as disgusted as she felt.

“Ma’am, were you or were you not in your house around 5 O'clock?”

“No. I wasn’t”

“You weren’t?”

“No… I was in the garden.”

“So when your husband was being shot in the den, you were not in the house but directly behind the house. Is there anyone besides you and your dead husband to attest to the fact that you were not the one doing the shooting?”

“But it couldn’t have been me! You heard the noise these shoes made. How could you kill anyone in shoes like these? Especially someone like Ethan, who everyone knows could hear a tap dripping from four rooms away?”

“So ma’am what you are telling me is that in fact you do not have an alibi. You have a dead husband, a murder weapon in your car, and million dollar life insurance claim to send off. But you do not have an alibi,” said Santa, becoming Grinch-ier by the minute.

“Well it’s an excuse then, whatever,” she said allowing some annoyance to creep into her finishing-school perfected voice.

“And this “excuse” is the audible volume of a pair of sandals you may or may not have been wearing at 5 o’clock today? I have that right,” he said leaning across the table.

For a wild minute she thought he might be sucked into the vortex at the centre of the table knot. But looking at him stuffed into his large rayon suit she knew it would taking quite a lot of sucking on the part of the vortex to accomplish that feat. So she was forced to rebut.

“Of course I was wearing them then! I’ve still got them on haven’t I?” she said, now using the frosty tone usually reserved for her housekeeper and nanny.

From the corner of the room Detective Tall made a gesture into the mirror and walked over to the table.

“O.K. Well I think we are about done here Mrs. Marshall. We’re sending someone in to take you back to holding.”

“Holding? You mean you’re keeping me here?” she said looking confused. What part of this were they missing? She tried one more time to explain.

“You just wouldn’t kill your husband wearing flip flops. Barefoot surely, in trainers or even stilettos if you were a little kinky, but you just cannot kill a man wearing flip flops!”

“Be that as it may Ms. Marshall, if I were you I’d seriously start thinking about a meeting with my lawyer,” he said opening the door for a uniformed guard who took her arm in his clammy hand and helped her to her feet.

“Oh this is just ridiculous!” she snapped as she was turned towards the door.

“Well ridiculous or not, I’m thinking you might be getting a little scared just about now,” he said, a small smile playing on his lips as she was led out of the room.

Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

“The innocent have no fear detective.”

Thwack.

“Nor do the pathological Mrs. Marshall.”

There are times when I think I’ve done all the interesting, spontaneous, life-enriching things I am going to do in this lifetime.

There are times when I think it’s pathetic to go out and drink and dance and get sloppy, and times when I still think it’s cool to smoke cigarettes and romantic to drink alone and feel indulgently sad.

Sometimes I think I could still learn to play the guitar. Don't think I'll ever record an album, but from time to time I still think I’ll write a novel.

I rarely think it’s a novel anyone would publish… or one I’d ever let anyone read.

I refuse to think I’ll die alone… for more than a minute or two. I think I may own a dog one day. I’m not so sure about a child but I think I want one though.

I don’t think I’ll own a home but I think I’ll find a place to call home (possibly a few).

I think it’d be cool to have a car, but then I think it would be expensive and frustrating more often than not.

Sometimes I think I’m hopelessly flawed, and then I think I’m being melodramatic. Then there I times I think I’m really pretty (but I don’t think I’d go around asking for confirmation on it in case I get a response I don’t really want to hear.)

There are times when I can't think about anything at all.

That’s when I stop writing....

It is the unfortunate truth that he is never so handsome as when he’s angry.

He isn’t terrible to look at or anything. He has a pleasant face and a hairstyle kept tidy with regular trimmings. He is slightly taller than average, with a hint of muscle on his medium frame. All and all he’s easy on the eyes, if a little bit vanilla.

But when he gets angry, how to explain it? Things… shift.

The colour comes into his face to highligh jutting cheekbones and strong jaw line you always swear weren’t there before. His roundness becomes angles and his softness hardens and you think you might like him better that way.

And this always makes you smile which makes him step closer, eyes snapping and burning. As he glares at you, you remark, as always, that you had forgotten how deep the blue of his eyes is, like the ocean. This never fails to enrage him further, but you just can’t help it.

You’ve fallen into them, swimming.

And he yells in your ear but you never hear what he says because it always sounds like thunder (or is that just your heart beating?) And you think you should turn from him but you never do because the heat between you is stifling and you’re drowning in him and he is terrifying and beautiful and you are tired and sad.

And you always think that if he’d just put his arms around you, you could sleep forever.

And his hand always does reach out for you. But only to make you sleep a little while.

On a day like this...


At a lake like this...


If you do a little of this...


You can make a little something like this...

 

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.

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!)

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.

-- “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.)

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?

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….

Leo Traits

The One Hand:

• Generous and warmhearted
• Creative and enthusiastic
• Broad-minded and expansive
• Faithful and loving

The Other Hand:

• Pompous and patronizing
• Bossy and interfering
• Dogmatic and intolerant

Her cotton skirt, thin and rain soaked, slapped wetly against her thighs as she walked. The feeling was both uncomfortable and enjoyable. An accurate definition of sensuality, hers anyway, she thought before determining the side of the road was not the most appropriate place to be thinking such things.

There was something of the amateur-erotic about her present state though. Her T-shirt transparent now and looking like she had poured it on, her hair blown free of its braid, the water streaked mascara and high colour on her cheeks.

“I might as well be soaping up the car with my chest,” she muttered knowing that as she was currently a walking dream for would-be rapists and their defense lawyers, she wouldn’t be hitching a ride back into town.

Turning her back on her traitorous Honda she aimed for home trying to remember which side of the street you were supposed to walk on to best avoid being mowed down by a driver. Not that there was much traffic on the road that night…. or ever in that place. Still she knew that once you’re luck has crested things can go from bad to worse in the blink of an eye. And no matter how terrible her night had been so far, dead was worse than wet and wheel-less.

She had to admit that having now been out long enough to be drenched to just this side of waterlogged, her mood was actually improving.

Having surrenderd to a soaking you realize it's not all that bad. It’s not often that your whole body gets to feel something. The real frustration with wet weather, she argued to herself, is the constant battle to stay dry. To defend all limbs and packages and pant legs simultaneously is futile and destined to make you feel a failure. Letting the fat droplets hit her square in the face, she felt invigorated, scrubbed clean. Baptized.

Baptized?

Why was it that whenever her thoughts turned to the sensual, religion was only a thoughtbeat behind?

Thoughtbeat!

She marveled at what a perfectly descriptive word thoughtbeat was and wondered how it could be that it wasn’t even a word at all. How could people explain this mental phenomenon without it? How had she?

Then she swore.

She swore because she had walked into the street sign at the corner of her block. Then she swore again because that kind of thing was always happening to her.

She swore one final time as she realized was already home. That meant she had spent the last three miles and forty minutes lost in her own head and had no recollection of the journey. That kind of thing was always happening too.

She checked herself over determined there was no damage and headed up the drive, the car and the reason she’d been driving it forgotten as she turned her thoughts to large soft towels and larger glasses of wine.