What would have had to be different in his own life for him to have wound up in such a house? Probably not all that much, and of course, he still might at some point down the road, you never knew, although it was unlikely to happen any time soon. Would he be happy living in such a house, and with the lifestyle accoutrements that it seemed inexorably to imply: the sensible car and the labradoodle, the procreative schemes? It was, after all, a tried and true package in comparison to what he had chosen for himself, and one that had surely resulted in a meaningful, gratifying existence for millions upon millions.
He went to the railing of the deck and looked out past the sloping backyards to the downtown skyline. That view again. He had seen it a half-dozen times since he’d first come here with Pete more than a year ago. It was even better at night than during the day, so perfect-seeming that it appeared to be artificial. He could have been looking at a detailed scale model, complete with thousands of little twinkling lights in white, red and green, something lovingly crafted by a lone artisan rather than evolved over decades through the interactions of countless developers, politicians and citizens. It reminded him a little of the backdrop of a late-night talk show, something Letterman or Conan might have made use of if they’d been local.
A female voice spoke to him, close enough that he jumped a little.
“It looks fake, if you ask me,” the voice said. “Like the backdrop of a late-night talk show.”
He whipped his head towards whomever it was – nearly dislocating his neck in the process – and found himself face to face with a woman he hadn’t met yet. She’d been part of a small group of people standing at the far end of the deck, most of whom were now heading inside. Instead of accompanying them, she’d hung back to join him in gazing out over the city. Her skin was golden-brown, her hair the colour of chocolate cake, under the light from the yellow windows at Stephan’s back. She smiled up at him, a hint of mischief in her eyes.
“Sorry about that,” she said, laughing. “I see I surprised you a little.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he replied. “It’s just funny what you said, about the backdrop. It’s exactly what I was thinking just now. You’re not some kind of mind reader, are you?”
“I wish,” she said. “That would be a useful skill. Fun, too.”
She spoke with a slight accent – possibly Indian. There was something fresh and calming about its cadence.
“But it’s not so surprising after all, is it?” she said. “It really does look like that.”
“I guess you’re right,” he admitted. “If I ever have a job shooting a talk-show backdrop, I’ll know exactly where to come.”
“Shooting a talk show backdrop… you’re a photographer!”
“Yes.”
“How cool. What kind of photographer? Not porno, I hope.” She tsked at him in admonition, although it was obvious that she was just kidding.
“Um, no. I work for magazines, mostly – not dirty ones, unless you think that interior design stories and restaurant reviews are porn. Which maybe they are in a way, come to think of it.”
“What a cool job! Do you love it? Is it your passion?”
Her tone was so enthusiastic that for a second he thought she might still be teasing him. But no, she wasn’t. It was just her style, it seemed.
“I guess you could say it is a passion, unfortunately,” he said.
“Why unfortunately?”
“Well, because it makes you into a sucker. People can use it against you. They know you’ll work hard, even if the money isn’t good. They know you’d be doing it for free if they weren’t paying you.”
“Hmmm, I never thought of that.” Her brow furrowed, as if what he had just said was very, very sad. Then she brightened. “Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to stick with my point and shoot!”
She pulled a little metallic rectangle out of her hip pocket and handed it to him. He took it from her, since it was offered, flipped it around in his hands.
“God, they keep getting smaller and smaller, don’t they?”
“And cheaper,” she said, nodding. “And more powerful. This one’s got three megapixels. Video capable, four-times optical zoom lens.”
He handed it back to her. “It’s nice.”
“They’re pretty to look at, aren’t they? Like jewellery.”
He nodded – she was right. “So what about you, what do you do? Camera salesperson?”
She shook her head. “No, although I guess I’m a bit of an electronics fan. I’m an urban planner, with the city.”
“Urban planner. Huh. Also a pretty cool job.”
“You think so?”
“Of course. You help make the city work for millions of people. All of that –” He gestured towards the talk-show backdrop, its manifold intricacies. “That’s much more useful than what I do. Do you have, like, a special area of expertise?”
“Traffic flows. I help figure out where to put the lights, and how they’re timed so you’re not stopping your car every ten seconds. That kind of stuff. Unbearably boring, actually. Sorry if that’s disappointing.”
“Brutally disappointing. I’m afraid we’re not going to be friends after all.”
She giggled, punched him lightly on the arm, and they kept talking.
* * * * *
The back door of the house creaked open, emitting a blast of heat from inside, and a group of five or six new arrivals filed out onto the deck – men and women, a couple of them with soon-to-be-lit cigarettes already dangling from their lips. The sudden warmth, gone as soon as the door clicked shut behind the last of the newcomers, made Stephan realize how chilly the night had grown – unusually warm for the time of year, granted, but cold enough that their words were written in the night air between them in faint white puffs. He’d been so focused on their conversation that he hadn’t been conscious of the temperature until now. Neither had she been, apparently. He took this as a good sign, and forged ahead.
He knew her name now: Natacha with a “c,” the Portuguese spelling, as she had informed him. “When people write it, they misspell it. When they read it, they mispronounce it – drives me nutty.” Her family had come here when she was a little girl, from the island of Mauritius, a place he’d vaguely heard of but knew little about. It was an island in the Indian Ocean, she’d helpfully reminded him, near Mozambique, but smaller and wealthier, a former Portuguese colony, hence that troublesome “c.” She was an old friend of Sally’s – they’d gone to high school together – and she knew Pete well too, thought he was a great guy.
“I make dinner for them once in a while,” she said. “He is a most appreciative eater.”
“That he is.”
She knew the new crowd on the deck, too – they were all buddies, apparently, which Stephan found vaguely disconcerting. Now she was bantering back and forth with one of the guys, a quick-tongued Asian dude with a hip, spiky hairstyle. Maybe she and he were an item of some kind, it seemed possible. Stephan was never at his best in boisterous groups, preferring the intimacy of one-on-one, or the official observer status enjoyed by the working photographer. He started to ease his way towards the back door, suddenly deflated. And anyway, he was starting to feel the cold. It was time he got back inside and chatted with a few of those other old school friends he hadn’t yet connected with.
But just as he lifted a foot to step towards the door, she placed a hand gently on his back, halting him in mid-stride.
“Guys, have you met Pete’s friend Stephan, the photojournalist, yet?”
“Ooooh, Stephan the photojournalist.”
“Really just plain ‘Stephan’ is fine.”
They asked him a few questions about his work, and in his answers he took care to avoid coming off as arrogant, as if he endorsed Natacha’s implication that his job made him noteworthy or cool. A few minutes later, he and she were off on their own again, having picked up where they had left off when the group came outside. The guy she’d been bantering with had retreated indoors,
the others were staying out of the way, and Stephan had her to himself again, amazed by his good fortune.
He didn’t want the conversation to end, but he also didn’t want to come on too strong, or say something stupid. And it really was getting cold, now.
“Well, I guess I’d better go in and check on Pete,” he said, finally. “Make sure he’s not making an ass of himself. Should we go in?”
“I think I’ll stay out here and try getting a couple of pictures of this view,” she said. “You go ahead and see to your friend, if you really think he needs you.”
“We went to university together. I could tell you stories.”
“Aha! I love a little dirt. You’ll have to fill me in some time.”
“I’m sworn to secrecy, unfortunately.”
“A loyal friend, then. Well, if I ever see that view on TV at three in the morning, I’ll know who’s responsible.”
At the door he paused, glanced back. She was standing by the edge of the deck, looking away towards the skyline. Holding her tiny point-and-shoot camera aloft, she snapped a couple of pictures with the flash turned on. He hesitated for a moment, and then went back to her.
“I’m sorry to be an annoying know-it-all, but you’ll never get a decent shot that way.”
She turned to him and smiled. “You’re right. See?”
She held up the camera so that he could see the display screen. The yard in the foreground was overexposed, the skyline barely visible.
“I can show you a trick that might work, if you’d like.”
“Of course,” she said, handing over the camera.
He made a few adjustments, fumbling a little with the unfamiliar digital controls, then placed the camera on the top of the deck railing.
“When it’s night time, the shutter has to stay open for a long time to let in enough light,” he explained. “But that’s way too long to hold the camera still enough for the shot to be crisp. You don’t have a tripod, obviously, but all you really need is a stable surface.”
He snapped the shot, the flash turned off this time. The shutter stayed open so long that it seemed to have gone dead, but after several seconds it closed with a soft click. He handed the camera back to her, and she looked at the image, her eyes widening.
“Oh my god, it’s fantastic! Thank you!”
“No problem.”
She smiled up at him again in her grateful, open way, seeming to promise that she had nothing to hide. He smiled back.
Chapter 11
Out of practice at such things, he had failed to get her cell number on the spot, but with Pete’s help the mistake was easily remedied. Pete called him back within fifteen minutes of his request, reading the number out and getting him to repeat it back. He even refrained from any teasing or innuendo, which was kind. He simply noted that Natacha was a very cool person, and that he thought Stephan was smart to want to get to know her better.
“If you ever need your garden weeded or your snow shovelled, just let me know,” Stephan said, with gratitude.
“It’s a little early in the game for that,” Pete said. “Just keep me posted on how it goes and we’ll discuss payment schedules later.”
Stephan gave her a call that afternoon, as soon as he managed to psych himself up sufficiently to tap out her number. He didn’t want to leave himself time to over-analyze. Such openings were not to be taken for granted, and he was wary of blowing his chance.
He needn’t have worried.
“That photo you took for me – oh my god! It looks amaaaazing,” she said, drawing out the last word until it seemed about to tear in half.
“I’m glad you like it.” He felt prouder than the accolade warranted, as if he’d just won first place in a major photography contest.
“I’ve already had a print of it made. It’s up on my fridge, in a place of honour next to some six-year-old’s off-kilter drawing of a tractor.”
“Wait a minute, you don’t know the artist personally? What’s that doing up there?”
“I bought it at a sidewalk art exhibition a few doors down from my place. Apparently they’re the new lemonade stands.”
They made a date to go out for a coffee – a seemingly safe bet – but the night before they were to meet, his sleep had been disturbed by nightmares: the vampire baseball team chasing him around an empty de Chirico stadium cackling “batter out, batter out” over and over again. It seemed like a bad omen, but at the café everything went as smoothly as could be and she was even lovelier and smarter then he’d remembered. They didn’t talk about big ideas or grand schemes the way he and Jenny Wynne always had. But their conversation flowed effortlessly, with nary a dull moment or awkward pause. Physically, she was half a head shorter than Jenny Wynne, with curvy hips and tiny hands that flitted above the table like birds. She gave him a hug as the said goodbye, out on the street, her breasts pressing softly against him.
A week later, they went to see a movie at a rep cinema in Yorkville. He liked the idea of going out to the movies on their first date. As an activity, it seemed wholesome and reliable, something new couples had been doing for decades. Afterwards, over drinks at a nearby rooftop lounge, they gamely discussed the film’s merits, debating its themes and underlying message, as he might have once done with Jenny Wynne. At the end of the night, he walked her to the subway, where she lifter her face, eyes closed, and he leaned in for a kiss.
Alone in his bed later that night, he reviewed the evening in his head, noting with satisfaction that it seemed to have gone without a hitch. He was determined to do things properly this time. He wasn’t looking for a series of flings, or a friends-with-benefits arrangement, but a real relationship, free of games.
Natacha was just the sort of person to be with in such a relationship, he had sensed. She was fun and energetic, sure, but also reliable and down-to-earth. While she had a good career, in a practical and well-paying field, she wasn’t career-focused to a fault. It had occurred to him that when he’d kissed her there hadn’t been fireworks. He didn’t feel lust for her the way he had from the start with Jenny Wynne, but that didn’t matter to him. He was sick and tired of lust. Obsession was for stalkers and department-store perfumes. He wanted someone who would be there for him when it mattered, like the next time he held an exhibition, lost a client, won an award. He wanted someone who wouldn’t ditch him at the drop of a hat for the latest second-rate American movie director lured within reach by the government’s program of generous film production subsidies and tax breaks.
Soon he was taking her out to work-related events, introducing her around. Jenny Wynne was not in attendance on any of these occasions, which vaguely disappointed him. He wanted her to see that he’d moved on.
A month or so into their relationship, Natacha invited him to meet her parents, Navin and Monique, at their home in the city’s inner suburbs. Her little brother – a surly teenager – treated him with suspicion, but her parents were welcoming and kind. Her mother gave him a gift of some delicious curries for his lunches. (She had learned from her daughter that he had subsisted in recent years on takeout food and instant noodles.)
His one regret was that he’d taken so long to get to this point. If he had only known how easy it was to do the thing that actually made you happy – as opposed to the thing that was in keeping with your most abstract yearnings – he could have spared himself vast amounts of pain and wasted time. He had willingly subjected himself to so much punishment. He’d taken a beating and gone back for seconds, thirds, and fourths. But all of that was behind him now. For the first time in years, he was his own person.
On a cold, blustery night mid-way between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, he took the subway up to Yonge and Eglinton for dinner at Natacha’s apartment. In a couple of days, they’d celebrate New Year’s Eve together at a party organized by a friend of Pete and Sally’s, but in the meantime they wanted to have their own private get-together. The apartment was located in an old brick low-rise on a curving side street. It was a
two-bedroom place, but Natacha had it to herself at the moment. Her roommate, a PhD student, was away in Germany for several months conducting research.
He kissed her at the front door and handed over a small bouquet of white, blue and yellowish flowers. They were winter colours, the florist had said, but seemed bright and summery to his eye.
“Oh, look – they match my dress,” she said, indicating the powder-blue blossoms.
She was gorgeous that night. Her velvet dress set off her green eyes, and her hair was down, framing her face in thick, luxurious waves.
“You’re right!” he exclaimed, as if it was the most incredible coincidence.
She leaned in to inhale the scent. “So nice! I’ll just get them into a vase.”
For some reason, it pleased him that she had a vase on hand. His own home inventory included various forms of ceramics and glassware, from coffee mugs to beakers for developer chemicals, but nothing quite so quintessentially domestic.
She led him through the living room to the kitchen. The space was cozy and classic: hardwood floors, comfy couches, her roommate’s paintings adorning the walls. There was even an old fireplace. It no longer worked, at least not with real fire, but someone – perhaps during the late seventies – had installed a fake fire in the grate. It consisted of a couple of plastic logs, behind which there was a horizontal light bulb. The bulb was enclosed in a translucent orange cylinder etched with curving patterns that rotated when you flipped a light switch. Even this, he had to admit, was charmingly kitschy.
In the kitchen, Natacha threw an apron on over her dress and started in on dinner. Eager to oblige in his assigned role as sous chef, he was soon busily at work chopping carrots, potatoes and onions, measuring out spices and clarified butter. The apartment filled with complex flavours.
The Silver Age Page 14