by Julie Wilson
READER
Caucasian male, late 30s, with short black hair and goatee, wearing blue bomber jacket, unzipped, hat in lap, sitting by the window.
King Leary
Paul Quarrington
(Anchor Books, 2007)
p 133
Dress Rehearsal
It’s not hard to imagine the drop from their second floor bedroom window. She’s played it out nightly, confident she can kick out the screen in time to shimmy onto the ledge and down to safety, a sprained ankle the worst she’d suffer. And what’s a sprained ankle? That’s why she arranged for their baby girl to stay at her grandmother’s for the night, why she bought an extra pack of Marlboros just in case he finished his own and there wasn’t anything left to leave lit on the sofa cushion after he’d fallen asleep and she’d gone up to bed.
READER
Caucasian female, late 20s, with powder-pale complexion and long, brown hair, with pink-and-green stripes down each side, wearing worn leather coat and black boots.
The Glass Castle
Jeannette Walls
(Scribner, 2006)
p 32
(In)digestion
As they prepared the next day’s lunches, it was her son’s job to cut the fruit and veggies. It was the only way he’d eat them. She would just as soon throw a whole apple and carrot into his bag. But he couldn’t have anything left over, anything that would require scraping a plate, tossing a core, or shedding a peel. He would only digest that which completely disappeared. He didn’t eat food so much as hoard it. As a young child, this required many lectures detailing the significant difference between a grape and a pebble. Or, shelled nuts and a ball of Silly Putty still pressed inside a toy capsule from the shopping mall vending machine.
READER
Black female, late 30s, with short spiky hair and thin arched eyebrows, wearing red trench coat, white dress pants, and open-toed sandals. An open lunch bag sits zipped open in her lap, full of containers of cubed fruit and carrot sticks.
Middlesex
Jeffrey Eugenides
(Knopf, 2003)
p 205
Legal Limits
She couldn’t yet bait her own hook, but she was able to set it, slowing reeling in the pickerel, her first-ever catch. She butted the rod’s handle against her hip as the guide reached out a long arm, steadying himself against the side. No net, no net, he whispered, pinching the line and swinging the fish in to his chest. He scanned the water for other vessels, then relaxed, the promise of celebratory breakfast beer confirmed by his wide grin. He patted her shoulder. She’d done good. Real good.
She adjusted her cap and leaned back into the sun, her eyes watering against the glare of a bright morning sky. The sharp crack startled her. She turned to see the guide’s hands tight around the fish’s head, a flutter of bright pink fanned out over the bottom of the boat.
READER
Asian female, mid-20s, with short blond hair, wearing thick eyeliner, tight blue jeans, long green sweater, and white flip flops.
The Time in Between
David Bergen
(McClelland & Stewart, 2005)
p 139
He Didn’t See It Coming
The fight was long done, though the dinner plates were still sitting on the kitchen table. They lay beside one another in bed staring at the ceiling, neither wanting to be the first to roll over. She could hear his eyelids clicking. He was looking for clues, filing back through the moments he might have known the fight was about to begin. They’d argued about her hair. She’d cut it all off wanting to look like Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby. He’d said he liked it, very much, and he did. He’d meant it. But she’d said there was one patch of hair growing out differently. He hadn’t noticed. He thought it looked fine, he’d said. He loved her eyes, they were surely the highlight of her head, he’d wanted to add, but he’d waited too long and she’d started yelling, “It’s like you can’t even see me!” Didn’t he see, she’d continued, that suddenly she realized she couldn’t trust him to save her in time. In time for what, he’d asked. “I mean, what if a car was coming?” she’d spat. He’d stammered. A car? She hated it when he stammered. He hated it when she’d had too much wine, but he listened, hopeful she would make sense soon. She’d pushed her chair from the kitchen table, abandoning him and their untouched meals. “My point,” she’d concluded, steadying herself against the bannister on her way up to their bedroom, “is that you think it’s just hair. But one day it will be the speed of an approaching car that you don’t notice. You’ll be the last thing I see. And it will be all your fault.”
READER
Black female, late 30s, with long hair, wearing white hoodie under black jacket and tan leather boots
Isobel and Emile
Alan Reed
(Coach House Books, 2010)
p 78.
SHE’D THOUGHT NO PAIN, NO JOY, WAS EXEMPT FROM FADING, UNTIL THIS LINGERED.
Breaking Ties
The lace on his left shoe has snapped. He resents the caution he needs to observe each morning, to tie a crude knot, the monkey in the middle between two rusted eyelets. What was once an act of physical memory — really, he thinks, when was the last time I remember putting on my shoes? — has become as bothersome as the realization that school won’t end any time soon. He prolongs taking his shoes off at night, stubbornly carting a dried leaf from the curb through his living room and into the bedroom, its dusty skeleton, laid to rest, beside the shoe rack.
READER
East African male, mid-20s, wearing black leather jacket, black cap, red glasses, and slick lip gloss.
The Retreat
David Bergen
(McClelland & Stewart, 2008)
halfway through
Six Spin
He remembers running up to the Six Spin at the fairground. When he got to the entrance, he froze at the sight of the girl taking tickets. He recognized her from football games, where she sat on the other end of the bleachers, reading by the field lights.
Brigitte — the name he’d given her — was tall for a girl, at least six feet. She wore the requisite carnival uniform, blue polo shirt, and cream-coloured shorts. But, while other attendants wore white sneakers with tennis socks, she wore high-laced black boots with steel toes. Her commitment to the park-regulated blue baseball cap was half-assed, at best, the hat sitting on the edge of her razor-cut black bob.
He hiked up his big brother’s hand-me-down jeans, staring up into Brigitte’s face as he handed her his tickets, enamoured with the thick makeup outlining her eyes, curving up to her temples. In place of hoop earrings, she wore safety pins; one ear’s ragged hole was infected.
She was, in a word, stunning. She was a girl he could want to be.
READER
Caucasian male, early 40s, short and stalky, with bright blue eyes, wearing grey jacket, black scarf, and green cargo pants.
By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
Elizabeth Smart
(HarperCollins, 1991)
p 41
Morning Glories
He slips out, leaving his lover asleep, and makes his way down the hill to the bay. He sits on the steps, pulls his hoodie over his head to shade his eyes from the glare off the water. A radio plays somewhere down the channel, a sample of early ’80s soft rock. He slips off his shorts and hoodie, shielding his penis from the breeze. He inches a step lower and dangles the fingers of his free hand into the water. A spider waxes the surface. He holds himself safe, eyeing a stripped birch branch bobbing against the shoreline, and indulges in a lazy tug set back from view before gliding into the water for the first of twenty laps.
READER
Black male, late 40s, wearing dark suit, striped tie, and leather shoes, carrying Roots backpack with compass key chain.
A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You
Amy Bloom
(Random House, 2000)
p 50
House Rules
She settles i
nto his chest, the bathwater rising around her collarbone. He strokes her arms, her thighs, reaches below the water and rests his fingers on her hips, tapping. It’s her decision. She rolls over, rests her breasts against him, kissing his neck below the scar. He wraps his arms around her, satisfied with her gesture. They’ll make it another day.
READER
Caucasian female, early 40s, with short strawberry blond hair, wearing simple silver stud in left nostril, long green coat, and crushed velvet scarf, carrying teal umbrella.
Not That Kind of Girl
Catherine Alliott
(Headline Book Publishing, 2005)
p 166
Complementary Colours
In grad school, he saw a film he didn’t understand. The girl who made it was shy and pretty and always sat in the front row. The film was quiet and blue. Everything so blue. From the bathwater, to the kitchen kettle, to the drapes softly suckled by the slightly open mouth of a screenless window.
When the horse appeared out of the fog, it too was blue. As it lumbered closer to the camera, he’d begun to cry, the horse’s last laboured breaths indistinguishable from the cloud cover.
She’d turned in her chair to look back at the boy awash in blue, the boy in the orange shirt.
READER
Caucasian male, mid-50s, with scruffy white hair, wearing glasses, tan pants, burgundy sweater, and brown leather boots.
Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy
(Vintage, 1992)
p 117
Surplus
She buys the jacket across the border at an army surplus store. She talks the owner down to twenty bucks. It’s heavy brown suede, each of its cuffs worn into a smooth crease from years of rolling. It zips flat up the front, to the middle of her ribs, but not over her chest. It’s a man’s jacket, after all. She adjusts the collar, snapping it high, even though it falls limp almost immediately.
It comes with a receipt in the breast pocket: five bucks of gasoline from a station one town over, and a tissue crumpled over a chewed-up piece of gum in a Big Red wrapper and the filter of a Marlboro. A day’s worth of sour breath, left to curdle second-hand.
READER
Caucasian female, early 30s, wearing black jeans, black-and-white sneakers, worn brown suede jacket, and headphones, carrying orange courier bag.
Prozac Nation
Elizabeth Wurtzel
(Houghton Mifflin, 1994)
p 101
Small Talks
She stands outside the apartment, half-drained bottle concealed inside a knotted plastic bag, the result of a sidebar session in the subway washroom after she received the text saying that he’d be at the party. Talking. Talking about politics. Talking about war. Talking about things that matter to her. Things she promised herself she wouldn’t talk about anymore at parties because she becomes That Girl. The one who talks about politics at parties. The one who reacts to what you say.
READER
Asian female, early 20s, wearing blue-and-red knitted cap, jean jacket under black vest, and jeans rolled high over black biker boots.
Ticknor
Sheila Heti
(House of Anansi Press, 2005)
p 65
Lots and Lots
There are only twenty-six underground parking spaces in her three-storey building. She’s occupied #18 since 1997. He’s had #20 since 2003. #19 became vacant in 2005, left free for visitors if they reserved ahead of time. Seeing one another through the empty space, they rarely say a thing. Occasionally they lift their travel mugs to one another to greet the day, or pause long enough to wonder aloud in unison if the superintendent will ever get around to fixing the faulty door on the shared washing machine. This weekend, #19 wasn’t empty. Out of province plates. Soft leather briefcase in back. Diet cola can in the cup holder. Monday morning, the car was gone, an oil stain marking the centre of #19, the diet cola can sitting under the No Smoking sign, ashes flecked around the tab. They peered at one another through the gap between their spaces, got into their cars, and checked their mirrors for oncoming traffic.
READER
South Asian female, mid-50s, with curly
shoulder-length hair pulled back in loose ponytail, wearing fine gold-rimmed glasses and black jacket.
Feels Like Family
Sherryl Woods
(Mira, 2010)
p 113
Woman and Parrot
Her grandmother’s Chrysler Imperial rumbled down the road away from the farm and into the city for supplies, leaving her, 12 years old, with a squawking parrot and a nearly blind woman scanning the excessively large print of Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd. No pages to turn, she curled her shoulders forward, biting her nails, and clearing her throat to punctuate the silence, reminding the woman she was still in the room. She focused on the woman’s fingernails, soft pink and peeling like discarded clam shells. The parrot called for dinner. “Oh, balls,” the woman proclaimed, pushing herself back from the table, startled by the sudden surprise of a young stranger beside her.
READER
Asian female, 30s, with long brown hair under white knit cap, wearing blue peacoat and jeans tucked into white leather boots.
The Book of Negroes
Lawrence Hill
(HarperCollins, 2007)
p 87
Dreams of a Would-Be Government Employee
When had she abandoned her dream to become a rural mail carrier, to drive on the shoulder, to back up against the flow of traffic like a clown car in a Shriners’ Parade, to shower each package’s recipient with a handful of wrapped candy?
READER
Caucasian female, mid-20s, with blond hair
clipped up, wearing red peacoat,
white leather purse, and grey uggs.
Total Control
David Baldacci
(Grand Central Publishing, 1997)
p 130
Simple Sandwiches
For the third night in a row, he’d dreamt of his colleague. In the dreams, they never touch. They don’t kiss. You couldn’t even really say they hugged. They lean against one another in the break room while they eat their simple cheese and lettuce sandwiches, breast to breast, chin to shoulder, delighting in the explicit domesticity of their inferred affair.
READER
Caucasian male, 50s, with silver hair and jet-black eyebrows, wearing long wool coat and wraparound earmuffs.
Mordecai, The Life & Times
Charles Foran
(Knopf, 2010)
p 41
SOON HER SON WILL HAVE NINE TEETH AND KNOW HOW TO WALK, THE MEMORY OF EIGHT TEETH A DISTANT LUXURY.
Tho. Shelton
From his hospice bed, he stares at the framed 1819 aqua tint of the boxer Tho. Shelton, brought by his son from home. Shelton stands at the ready, fists raised and loosely clenched, razored bangs combed forward into a handsome peak, pencil-thin sideburns tracing the line of his square jaw. But it’s the bloated belly below the tie of the boxer’s pants he’s taken with, and the way the boxer’s frame leans like an expectant mother, hips jutting forward. A grandchild, he thinks, how wonderful, and rests the phone back in its cradle.
READER
Caucasian male, with short brown hair, wearing blue tuque, green scarf, and red-and-white striped second-hand sweater
Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife
Mary Roach
(Norton, 2005)
p 79
Bagged Lunch
This morning, he woke up on the edge of pleasure, the taste of foil hitting the back of his tongue, double chocolate licked from the wrapper of a pudding cup. His lunch bag holds the remnants of last night’s dinner, a rushed mash of canned peas, boiled potatoes, and breaded chicken thigh. But for today’s lunch he’ll have to go without dessert.
READER
Caucasian boy, 11–12 years old, with soft brown curly hair, wearing faded blue cable-knit sweater stretched about the shoulders and waist.
One Beas
tly Beast
Garth Nix, illustrated by Brian Biggs
(HarperCollins, 2007)
p 35
Miss Popular
Watching her reflection in the television screen, she practices smoking, leaning heavy into the couch cushion. Her friends look silly when they try to light a cigarette, wincing as if on Fear Factor and asked to chew through a hundred-year-old egg. She doesn’t see the point if you’re not going to enjoy it. Which is not to say that she does. She’s looking for things to be remembered for after they’ve graduated, gotten soft, and had three children with men they met at their first jobs. As if, twenty years from now, they’ll gather for a girls’ weekend and the prettiest of them will note the curl of smoke escaping her lips, washing over her tongue like mist, and sigh, “You always were the cool one. And you haven’t changed a bit.”
READER
South Asian female, early 20s, with short brown bob, wearing white wool sweater underneath open blue peacoat, three charms hanging from a long golden chain around her neck.