Henry stripped off the offending garments as he moved down the hall to James and Emily’s room. He rifled through the dresser drawers, but James didn’t have any fancy running duds at all. And all of Henry’s clothes were in the wash. He felt very strongly, however, that he simply could not write if he was dressed like a bum. It just didn’t go with his new approach to his life and work. He rifled through James’s dresser again, this time looking for serious writing clothes. He found a pair of sharp black pants, the kind of pants that really should be worn with underwear. Well, fine, Henry thought. The wash would soon be done, and in the meantime, he could take a shower. He opened the closet and pawed through the clothes neatly hung in there till he found a crisply ironed purple shirt.
“Excellent,” he said aloud. He padded to the bathroom naked and ran water for his shower. It came out freezing cold, and refused to get any warmer. Fucking hot water tank, he thought, twisting the tap off. I’ll have to wait for it to fill. He padded back to the bedroom and perched on the edge of the bed. He dug through the pockets of his jacket, which he scooped off the floor and replaced on the chair by the bed, for his cigarettes. He opened the pack. Four left. He might as well smoke them while he waited for the water tank to fill up again. Get them over with. Make the shower the start of his new way of doing things. Out with the old and smoky, in with the new and healthy, he thought, striking a match. He took a deep drag on the cigarette, leaned his back against the wall and drew his knees up to his chest.
*
Johnny Parker woke up feeling like shit. He reached for the glass of water on his nightstand, but it was empty. He smacked his lips together, thought, what the hell, rolled over and went right back to sleep.
*
There was a kid in the library Nathan felt sorry for. He saw the kid hanging around a lot, gangly in a big parka. He seemed like a nice, polite kid, and he was around even when the weather was really, really bad, so probably, Nathan thought, the kid was genuinely homeless. The bird trusted him, too. Nathan often saw the bird go right to the kid in the parka. He’d take the plump body in his hands, remove the little coloured paper animal from its leg, then hide it away in the bushes with the others. Nathan didn’t know why the kid did this — he never seemed to care much about them, or even look at them again. And if he knew that Nathan was spending time hanging out with the paper menagerie, he didn’t seem to mind. He was gentle with the bird, too, though he wasn’t affectionate toward it. For affection, the bird came to Nathan. Once the kid had removed the origami shape, hidden it and moved on his way, the bird would hop-fly to Nathan and just hang out with him for a bit. Nathan came to think of the bird as his because of this.
And he became fond of the kid in the parka, too. He thought he’d like to help the kid, but frankly, Nathan wasn’t really sure how to do that. He was pretty sure he’d had an idea at one point, but that notion, like so many other notions, was just a figment now, just a tingle on the tip of Nathan’s tongue. The kid was skulking around the stacks in his giant parka, and the library ladies clearly didn’t like it. On the weekends, or at night, the kid could hang out till the doors closed. The staff at those times could easily have been his friends. Young kids, greasy hair, lots of piercings, and snarling faces. But during the week-days, the library was staffed with upright, uptight ladies with sensible short hair or closely controlled buns, glasses on beaded chains that rested on their shelf-like bosoms, or scraggly chicken legs that poked out from beneath knee length skirts. They were parodies of themselves, Nathan thought, and they did not like the kid. On any given day they could be guaranteed to follow the kid around the library till they came up with some reason to run him out or till they got tired of following him and ran him out for no reason. This was one of those days.
“Come on, man,” the kid said in his foghorn voice. “It’s freezing out there.”
“Too bad,” said the librarian with the grey-red hair. “This isn’t a homeless shelter or a high school, it’s a library. You’re bothering the other patrons, and you’re going to have to move along.”
Nathan knew it was unfair. The kid hadn’t been doing anything. There were hardly any patrons, besides himself, and the kid wasn’t bothering him. But Nathan was pretty sure the library lady wouldn’t listen to him. No one at the library ever did. Frankly, the service there was terrible.
The kid moved toward the exit, his big sneakers clomping on the steps. Nathan hurried after him. If he’d finished law school, he thought, he could offer to help the kid. Maybe they could sue the library or at least that mean librarian. But he hadn’t finished law school, and though he knew what was happening to the kid was unjust, he was too shy to approach him, too shy to offer his help. He slid out the door behind the kid and watched dumbly as the kid loped away down Grafton Street. He raised a hand in half salute, but the kid didn’t look back, probably didn’t even know he was there. Nathan might as well have been invisible.
*
Henry lit his third cigarette and wondered if the water tank was full yet. He’d check it after this cigarette, he thought, tilting his head back against the wall and drawing the smoke down into his lungs. He’d get started after this cigarette, for sure.
*
Leah leaned back in her desk chair and looked out the window. The sky was relentlessly grey, the light weak and unconvincing. It made her study a gloomy place, this one that once had been cosy. But now it was stuffed with remnants of the past. Clothes she didn’t wear anymore but was too lazy to get rid of. Old school papers. Board games she’d forgotten how to play, and ones that hadn’t been that interesting to begin with. Nathan’s first guitar, its battered face splintered. His Hardy Boys books and her Nancy Drews, sharing shelf space and swapping dust motes. Leah felt hemmed in. The grey sky, the artifacts she never used and rarely really looked at, but somehow couldn’t part with. The endless work of making food she didn’t feel like eating. The futility of it all, of a grey day in late winter with no end in sight. Maybe this would be the year the end simply didn’t come.
*
Henry smoked his fourth cigarette right down to the filter.
*
Nathan stood on the library steps and watched everyone in the world go about their business. Overhead, a grey and brown bird was flying in circles.
*
Leah took a break. She went downstairs and made a pot of tea.
*
Johnny Parker laughed in his sleep, rolled over, and slept some more.
*
The bird alit on the library steps and strutted around Nathan’s feet.
“Hey fella,” Nathan said. He crouched down and reached out toward the bird, which looked at him with one bright black eye, cocked its head and cooed. “C’mere,” Nathan said, “It’s okay.” The bird took a tentative step toward Nathan. From its sheath dangled a bright, tattered creature.
“What happened, here, I wonder,” Nathan said. It wasn’t clear what this one was meant to be. Somewhere along the way, it got messed up. A dog maybe, though its leg looked broken. He looked around for the kid in the parka, but he was nowhere in sight.
“We should move over, little guy,” Nathan said. “It’s kind of busy here on the steps.” The bird cocked its head; its black eye glinted. “Let’s go check out Winston Churchill,” Nathan said. He balled his hands into fists in preparation for a bout of pacing. The bird skittered along the path beside him. Nathan stood and looked at Winston for a while. He wished he knew what to do. Finally he decided he should do what he’d been doing. He should wait. Eventually, the parka kid would come back and take the new animal and put it with the others. In the meantime, Nathan and the bird would hang out. He started pacing the path.
The bird hopped about nearby, foraging in the snow for a snack, a dropped french fry maybe, or a bit of pizza crust. This was prime hunting ground for such morsels, Nathan knew. At night, the library path was trod by drunken fools carrying the last of a dripping donair, or the two-foot long crust from one of those ridiculously large sl
ices of pizza. Large enough to serve as a cape, and certainly more than anyone could eat. But that didn’t seem to stop the people staggering home, snacks in hand.
At times like that, Nathan made sure to press himself against the side of the building. Sometimes, if it was really busy, he’d go to his spot in the bushes, where he felt more protected. He didn’t like to look at the people, so he usually kept his eyes closed. They were too drunk, their eyes were unpredictable, and they made fun of Winston Churchill. It was all too much for Nathan. But he was patient, and it passed, and then he had the library lawn to himself again, in the cold and the quiet. He might see a solitary straggler, but those didn’t bother him, not the way the groups did, with their loudness and their energy and the feeling of imminent danger that hung around them like the smell off the harbour.
In fact, he felt sorry for the solitary stragglers. They always seemed so lost, like they’d become disconnected from the group and didn’t know where to go anymore. They were like the bird that flew behind the V at harvest time, the one who broke formation, flapped out of time, forced to fly behind, always behind. He wondered if those birds ever made it, and what it was like for them when they got there. Did the other birds welcome the stragglers? Were they sorry they hadn’t waited? Did they promise not to do it again? Nathan felt a stab of sorrow. He faltered in his step. The bird hopped closer to him, the battered pink dog dragging in the snow. Nathan closed his eyes, breathed, and started to pace again.
*
Henry was out of cigarettes. Time to see about the laundry, he thought. He pulled on his jogging pants again and went down to the basement to check the dryer. His clothes were fluffy and warm and inviting. He smiled to himself, satisfied, and pulled them from the dryer. One more load for the washer, he thought, and then I’m back in business. He made the switch, moving wet clothes from the washer to the dryer, adding the last batch of dirty duds to the washer, lots of soap, cold water this time, since he still had to take a shower. He twirled the knobs and pushed the buttons and when the machines were clanking and whirring, he took the armload of clean socks and underwear upstairs and laid it all neatly on his bed. He mated the socks and rolled them up together, folded the underwear and sheets. He buried his nose in the fragrant cleanness of his towel, carried it to the bathroom and turned on the shower. He stepped out of his pants and then stood beneath the spray and began to sing. He lathered his hair and rubbed it till he could hear it squeaking. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d washed it actually. He pushed the bar of soap over his limbs and torso and felt glad. Life could be so simple, if you let it, he thought. When the water began running cold, he twisted the taps off and stepped out of the tub. Rubbed himself down with his clean, fluffy towel, returned to the bedroom and got dressed.
He almost cried at the feeling of clean, warm cotton against his ass. He pulled James’s pants on over his own gitch, buttoned-up the purple shirt over his soapy smelling chest hair. He pulled on a clean pair of black socks, looked at himself in the mirror and said, “Hey there.” He rubbed a little gel into his long hair, pulled it back with an elastic and thought, well, I am ready for just about anything. It seemed a shame to waste such a pulled together package on staying home, Henry thought. Maybe he’d just go down to the corner and get a pack of smokes. Yeah, that’d work. And then he’d come right home and get back to those songs.
He ran down the stairs, feeling full of purpose, shoved his feet into his boots, grabbed his coat off the newel post and was away.
*
Leah sipped her tea and looked out the living room window. She heard the door slam next door, and felt the accompanying reverberation. She scowled through the curtains at the guy who ran by — so that’s who was doing that! — but he wasn’t even looking her way. She made another mental note to email James in England about his house sitter, who was far and away the most inconsiderate neighbour Leah had ever had. She retied the belt on her bathrobe and thought about getting back to work. If she could get a good few hours behind her, then she could relax for a while, maybe call up Charlotte, see if she wanted to hang out. So it was back up the stairs to the study.
The wind howled at the old windows of her study, as if in a rage about being kept out. It was supposed to get much worse, the radio had said, and she was glad to be tucked away safe inside. Later, she’d make another pot of tea, and maybe figure out something else to bake, to fill the house again with warmth and comforting smells. But for now, the typing needed doing. Her tasting notes and recipe modifications still waited by the laptop. There wasn’t much to this job of hers, she knew, not much of consequence. The world wouldn’t stop turning if Leah Black could no longer test and refine recipes for Bite This magazine. She probably wouldn’t save any lives with her work. And in fact, there was a good chance she was part of the problem. After all, she could be using her expertise to be part of the free-food collective that served vegetarian meals each week in front of the public library to whoever needed or wanted a bite. Instead, she wrote recipes that called for expensive ingredients and acres of time. Recipes and stories that appeared in a glossy upscale magazine, bought by people who had two healthy incomes, or those who fantasized about that kind of carefree life.
On the other hand, she believed she was helping make people happy. And surely there was nothing wrong with that? She sighed, and opened her notebook. There’d been a time when making a difference in the world had meant everything to her. And now all she did was make soufflés. “Still,” she said to Neil, who curled on the floor by her feet. “Goddamn good soufflés, when it comes right down to it.” He opened one eye, twitched an ear at her, and then rolled over and went back to sleep. Leah began to work.
*
Henry decided to go to Willie’s. There was a closer corner store, but he didn’t like the guy behind the counter. Sam. He always looked at Henry as if Henry were actually covered in dirt or something. He had a lot of nerve, that guy, considering his store was full of stock that had been hanging around since no later than 1982, and the shop windows were yellow with dirt and cigarette smoke, and plump fly carcasses lay upside down on the sill, their crinkled up legs curling toward each other. It was enough to make a person sick. That, plus the judgmental way Sam looked at him, talked to him. Henry didn’t need to go through all that, just to buy a pack of smokes. So Willie’s it was. Sure, it was a few blocks away, and the weather was starting to turn, but it was worth it, and besides, Henry was feeling great, all clean and presentable. It was nice to be outside actually looking like a contributing member of society. Maybe he’d run into Tina, even.
At Willie’s, the bells chimed when he pushed the door open. The shop was full of neighbourhood types — old dudes Henry remembered all standing around smoking and talking to Willie, but rarely talking to each other. It made for a confusing cacophony some mornings. Three or four grizzled old dudes ignoring each other on the surface but paying enough attention to talk to Willie one at a time; to at least not talk over each other. The smell of old man overcoat was often stifling. On mornings like that, Henry would get his smokes and his bread and get out of there. But if the crowd of oldsters was small, Henry would linger for a while, looking at the magazines, browse the soups, stand in front of the cookies waiting for a craving to tell him what to do. Then he’d take his purchases to the counter and joke with Willie, or with one of his kids, the oldest boy behind the meat counter, usually the plump daughter with the incredible green-grey eyes behind the cash register, and Willie presiding over it all. On this day, the shop was at old man capacity, so Henry simply shouldered his way to the register, pulled out his wallet and asked for his smokes. It was the younger daughter today, the one who never said a word. She barely made eye contact. Henry wondered about her sometimes, wondered how she got along in such a robust yell-y family, wondered what would be the thing, finally, that would pull her out of herself, wondered if perhaps nothing ever would. She couldn’t find the cigarettes Henry wanted, and though he tried to guide her — “Those ones, r
ight there, the blue ones. No, to the left of those. No, not those ones, the mild ones. No, those are menthol” — it was no use. He was on the verge of hopping over the counter and grabbing them himself when the bells on the door jangled again, and the shop was filled with the unmistakable sound of Johnny Parker, fresh from sleep.
“Ho, boys,” Johnny’s voice gravelled. He cut through the crowd of old men, clapping them on their backs, setting off a symphony of old man catarrh. Amid the crust, and the throat clearing, Henry heard his friend greeting the oldsters. “Arnold, my man, good to see you man. Huey, still hanging in there, that’s good to see old man, good to see.” The crowd murmured and parted as Johnny Parker moved through it like a politician, till finally, he was at the counter.
“Henry,” Johnny Parker said, holding out his hand, “put it there.” Henry inserted his hand into the one offered, flashing for a moment on himself as just another old man in the corner store, so seamlessly did his name fit, so similar Johnny Parker’s greeting. Henry disentangled his hand from Johnny Parker’s, waved it helplessly toward the silent daughter still groping for his cigarettes.
“He’ll take the same ones as me, lovey,” Johnny Parker said smoothly. The silent daughter turned pink across the tops of her ears, reached for two packs of Johnny Parker’s brand and slid them across the counter.
Outside, the two paused to peel open the wrapping and began to smoke. “What’re you saying this fine morning, Henry, my friend?”
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